WS3 Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) Contract
In 2015, the USAF NWC at Kirtland AFB issued a solicitation seeking commercial interest in works to upgrade various security features of the WS3 vaults at the six deployment bases in Europe. A draft version of the documents is freely available.
The proposed works were divided into two phases. The first phase was for research and development, then a test installation, followed by various reviews to ensure compliance with requirements of the contract. The test installation was to be made in six Protective Aircraft Shelters (PAS) at Ramstein AB, while a Monitoring Facility would be installed in a trailer in a seventh PAS.
The second phase was to install the upgrades in PAS at deployment bases in Europe. Each base was named and the works there described, though each base was presented as an option the Air Force could exercise, or not, at a later date. A notional timetable for the installations was also presented, and is reproduced here:
| Program Milestones | Completion Date |
|---|---|
| Kickoff Meeting/Systems Requirements Review | 07/29/2016 |
| TO Guidance Conference | 09/30/2016 |
| Preliminary Design Review (PDR) | 01/27/2017 |
| Critical Design Review (CDR) | 05/20/2017 |
| Test Readiness Review (TRR) | 09/29/2017 |
| Contractor First PAS Test | 10/27/2017 |
| Government Developmental Test (DT) | 03/02/2018 |
| Government Operational Test (OT) | 04/20/2018 |
| Functional Configuration Audit (FCA) | 05/04/2018 |
| Physical Configuration Audit (PCA) | 05/18/2018 |
| Production Readiness Review (PRR) | 06/01/2018 |
| Phase I Completion | 06/01/2018 |
| Note: Assume 60 day delay between Phase I and Phase II for the Government to obtain approval to enter production. No costs will be incurred prior to receiving written authorization to enter Phase II. | |
| Operational Training | 03/29/2019 |
| Phase II Installation at First Site | 04/26/2019 |
| Phase II Installation at Second Site | 08/27/2019 |
| Phase II Installation at Third Site | 01/29/2020 |
| Phase II Installation at Fourth Site | 05/15/2020 |
| Phase II Installation at Fifth Site | 08/28/2020 |
| Phase II Installation at Sixth Site | 11/27/2020 |
| Note: The completion dates for the Phase II Installations provided are notional. The contractor should propose new dates in an IMS. An accelerated schedule is favorable to the notional schedule above. |
When the contract was signed, the estimated ultimate completion date given was 2025-10-22, showing that the timetable had slipped a little at that point. Image of full transaction record is here.
The timetable also extends into the period of restrictions due to the COVID pandemic, and executing the programme is likely to have been delayed for that reason. Indeed, work seemed still to be in progress when the requirements were drawn up for applying the upgrade to the vaults at RAF Lakenheath, but was complete when that was announced in March 2022 (see below).
Lakeneath Contracts
Below is an extract from page 3 of the unclassified version of the document Justification and Approval for Other Than Full Competition from 2022 regarding the future contract for bringing the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) to the WS3 vaults at RAF Lakenheath.
The full page is here, which also includes some guesses at the redacted text..
Further, the Sources Sought notice for the Lakenheath contract (posted 2022-03-16) contains the sentence, "The follow-on efforts will require ACT to procure, integrate, test, and install the Protective Aircraft Shelter Interior Intrusion Detection System (PAS-IIDS), and Alarm, Communication and Display (AC&D) systems at the new NATO installation as well as successfully complete Contractor Verification Testing upon installation to verify that the new system meets all requirements of the five previously installed systems under contract FA9422-16-C-8041."
Why only five bases? In the preliminary information for that other work, all six deployment bases are named and presented as options, in addition to requiring a test installation at Ramstein AB. Are they considering Aviano to be a USAF base, not a NATO location? No, because the Sources Sought names Lakenheath as a NATO installation. The obvious conclusion is that the USAF had made a decision not to exercise the option to upgrade the vaults at one base, and would therefore, eventually, deactivate them. This decision probably also initiated the reactivation of those at RAF Lakenheath.
Below are parts of the transaction record for contract FA9422-22-C-0004 (which resulted from the process of which the above was an early part) with significant sections here outlined in red. An image of the full page is here.
