Defence Online

Type of document: Contract Notice
Country: United Kingdom

1. Title: STRATEGIC POLITICAL MILITARY ASSISTED DECISION MAKING CAPABILITY – EXPORTING OPPORTUNITY- VERY SHORT DEADLINE
2. Awarding Authority: Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills acting on behalf of UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), GB. Web:
3. Contract type: Service contract
4. Description: Opportunity type NATO
Industry Defence
Discover the art-of-the-possible and state-of-the-art with respect to systems, products, services, technology, and methodologies.
Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (HQ SACT) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) in order to engage with nations, industry and academia.
The intention is to discover what is immediately available, the art-of-the-possible and state-of-the-art with respect to systems, products, services, technology, and methodologies in the area of assisted decision making, in order to support NATO Governance decision-making on Common Funded Capability Development.
This in an RFI ONLY. This RFI DOES NOT constitute a current Request for Proposal (RFP) nor a commitment to issue a future RFP. HQ SACT is not seeking proposals at this time; therefore, HQ SACT will not accept unsolicited proposals in respect to this RFI.
The purpose of this RFI is to involve nations, industry and academia, through collaboration, in an examination of current and future capabilities related to assisted decision making with a focus on systems, products, services, technology, and methodologies. The future capabilities will be either nation-owned or commercially available (procured by a nation as host nation, or by a NATO Agency). HQ SACT has not made a commitment to procure any of the systems, products, services, or technology described herein, and release of this RFI shall not be construed as such a commitment, nor as authorization to incur cost for which reimbursement will be required or sought. Further, respondents are advised that HQ SACT will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in responding to this RFI. The costs for responding to this RFI shall be borne solely by the responding party. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any subsequent RFP, if issued in the future.
HQ SACT has implemented an FFCI to increase opportunities for nations, industry and academia to contribute to HQ SACT capability development efforts through collaborative work. Such collaboration enables HQ SACT, and NATO as a whole, to benefit from nations/industry/academia models, advice, capabilities and experience in the course of this work. In addition to the benefits HQ SACT gains from such projects, this collaborative effort will provide nations/industry/academia with an improved understanding of NATO’s capability requirements and the associated issues and development challenges that need to be addressed by HQ SACT. Potential collaborative projects are on specific topics that are of mutual interest to all parties but shall be restricted to collaborations in non-procurement areas. Several mechanisms have been developed to support the initiation of collaborative projects between nations/industry/academia and HQ SACT ranging from informal information exchanges, workshops, studies or more extensive collaboration on research and experimentation.
Depending on the level and type of interaction needed for a collaborative project, a specific agreement may be needed between parties. The FFCI agreement for any specific project, if required by either party for the project to proceed, will range from ‘Non-disclosure Agreements’ (NDA) for projects involving exchange of specific information to more extensive ‘Declaration of Mutual Collaboration’ (DOMC) to address intellectual property and other issues.
Note that respondents of this RFI are not required to initiate an FFCI agreement in order to respond to this RFI.
It consists of 6 life cycle stage, 4 NATO Governance level decision points, or Gates, and 2 optional decision Gates.
At the first decision Gate, the Military Committee (MC) approves the Operational Requirements (ORs) and determines whether or not the submission of a Capability Requirements Brief (CRB) is required at the first optional decision Gate. Factors that may lead the MC to require governance approval of this product include anticipated capability type, the expected level of complexity and/or likely existence of more than one viable alternative for filling the OR.
A CRB is developed to identify the specific Capability Requirements (CRs), to identify potential courses of action (COAs) and to examine and confirm the COAs that are best suited to deliver the Capability within scope, cost and schedule. It should be noted that the potential COAs identified may be a combination of materiel and non-materiel solutions from multiple nations, industry and/or Academic sources.
With respect to potential COAs, the CRB is intended to determine their viability to address the approved ORs, including consideration of the possibility of ‘Adopt’-ing (an existing solution already in-service by nations, industry and academia), ‘Buy’-ing (acquiring a solution from industry), or ‘Create’-ing (developing a solution bespoke to NATO). In the case of Buy or Create, solutions could either be delivered through a NATO agency or a nation being the Host nation. The viability of a COA is assessed according to its operational effectiveness, affordability, and risk(s) (including technical maturity).
To apply due diligence in discovering COAs in support of the CRB, an RFI is necessary to ‘test the market’ and determine relevant materiel and non-materiel solutions that may exist or could be created within nations, industry or academia (as part of the consideration of ‘Adopt, ‘Buy or Create’). This request intends to identify prospective solutions for which the team may need to conduct additional in-depth discussions. This is not a formal request for submissions as part of a procurement; but rather a general request intended to determine whether any possible solutions exist that should be considered as a potential COA during the development of the CRB.
Aim
Political military assisted decision making (PM-ADM) will be a capability that helps to facilitate consensus, provides a persistent, comprehensive, and effective situational awareness of the current and projected status of areas of concern to NATO interests (including all PMSEII1 domains), assessments and response options to assist the political and military decision-makers to make timely and informed decisions. The system will alert users when trends indicate a threshold for any identified interest is projected to be in danger of being breeched. PM-ADM will support various analysis techniques to develop DIMEFIL2 courses of action to mitigate events deemed adverse to Alliance interests.
Effects and Benefits
PM-ADM desired effects, expected benefits and key performance parameters are identified below as:
Desired effects:
1. This capability will assist NATO to improve its ability to understand all PMESII interdependencies of the security environment and, when necessary, to propose data-informed DIMEFIL actions to deter or defend against adversary actions.
Expected benefits
1. The North Atlantic Council (NAC) achieves enhanced ability to reach consensus and respond to unfolding crises taking timely and effective decisions by improved capability to comprehend the situation including interdependences across PMESII aspects, exploit complex sets of data through state of the art visualization, analyse alternative options and understand potential intended and unintended effects of decisions.
2. Improved situational awareness. The data representing the NATO security environment is visually depicted with the ability to customize tailored views as required by the user. The most current data available is represented to ensure dynamism over time.
3. Enhanced ability to recognize comprehensive routine patterns of relationships across multiple domains in the data over time, thus improving analyses and assessments to determine adversary intent and goals.
4. Earlier recognition of anomalies within routine patterns such as Hybrid Warfare activity detection, identification and alerting.
5. Improved support to perform specialist and operational domain analyses and assessments.
6. Improved potential Response Option analyses across DIMEFIL areas.
7. Improved ability to visualize and analyse the impact of NAC decisions to draw strategic lessons learned or perform post-exercise/crisis analyses.
8. Improved tools to individual and collective training on the NATO Crisis Response System (NCRS).
9. More efficient and faster exchange of information among users.
10. Reduction in the time required to perform process steps due to automation and collaboration.
Key Performance Parameters (KPPs)
1. The user shall be able to assist NAC’s decision making by providing understanding of interdependencies across PMESII aspects, exploiting complex sets of data through state of the art visualisation, analysing alternative options and understanding potential intended and unintended effects of decisions
2. The user shall be provided with the ability to produce tailored views of the security environment data to assist NAC’s situational awareness
3. The user shall be provided with the most current data available to ensure dynamism over time
4. The user shall be able to recognise comprehensive routine patterns across multiple domains in the data over time, thus improving analyses and assessments to determine adversary intent and goals
5. The user shall be provided with the ability to recognise anomalies within routine patterns such as Hybrid Warfare activity detection, identification and alerting
6. The user shall be provided the enhanced ability to perform specialist and operational domain analysis and assessment
7. The user shall be provided with an enhanced ability to propose potential responses across DIMEFIL areas
8. The user shall be provided with an enhanced ability to visualize and analyse the impact of NAC decisions to draw strategic lessons learned or perform post-exercise/crisis analyses
9. The user shall be provided with improved tools for individual and collaborative training on NCRS
10. The user shall be enabled to share information more effectively
Current State
There are currently shortfalls and inefficiencies with how NATO conducts crisis response operations. It is a largely manual process where NATO and nations lack interoperability between command and control systems, which is necessary to comprehensively and effectively direct NATO forces to execute COAs to protect Alliance interests.
NATO’s current stove-piped approach to C2 systems cannot be extended and/or connected to other systems without great effort and cost.
REQUESTED INFORMATION
This RFI is interested in both materiel and non-materiel solutions, and combinations thereof, across the DOTMLPFI3 spectrum that contribute to PM-ADM programme requirements. These can include but aren’t limited to:
Systems, products, services, applications (and their functionality), facilities, infrastructure, or data (i.e. means)
Methodologies, engineering practices, doctrine, procedures, organisational framework, or operations support (i.e. ways)
Technologies and technical standards (open, proprietary)
This RFI will herein refer to one or many potential combinations of these as ‘your capabilities’. Most questions and statements are directed at both nations and industry/academia. Some questions and statements may be directed at either nations or industry/academia. Level of capability is expected to vary across nations and industry/academia.
PM-ADM may involve a combination of new, reused, and modified components. RFI responders may be interested in one or several requirement areas and potential components. RFI responders may scope their answers to the questions in the annexes A (For nations and industry/academia), B (For nations only), C (For industry/academia only) and D (nations and industry/academia).
Please confirm that you are open to further engagement about your capabilities, and please provide a nominated point of contact.
Eligibility to Respond. Only NATO nations, industry and academia that originate or are chartered/incorporated within NATO nations are eligible to respond to this RFI. Companies from Partner nations who want to participate should partner with a primary company headquartered within a NATO nation.
Responses to the RFI. The response(s) to this RFI may be submitted by email. Submission to include both the Technical and Contracting Points of Contact listed above.
Response Date. Responses to this RFI must be received by 7:00am EST on 26 AUGUST 2022.
5. CPV Code(s): 75200000, 75221000
6. NUTS code(s): UKC, UKD, UKE, UKF, UKG, UKH, UKI, UKJ, UKK, UKL, UKM, UKN
7. Main site or location of works, main place of delivery or main place of performance: North East (England), North West (England), Yorkshire And The Humber, East Midlands (England), West Midlands (England), East Of England, London, South East (England), South West (England), Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.
8. Reference attributed by awarding authority: Not provided.
9. Estimated value of requirement: Not provided.
10. Opportunity closing date 5.8.2022.
11. Address to which they must be sent: To register your interest in the above opportunity please visit:
12. Other information: TKR-202282-EX-1860497