Ramona Adams
A U.S. Air Force team has obtained an award from the Office of the Secretary of Defense for its management of a Raytheon-led contract to maintain, sustain and repair the ground-based Cobra Dane radar system.
The Air Force said Friday its Cobra Dane System Sustainment Team received the 2017 Secretary of Defense Performance Based Logistics Award at the system level for incentivizing Raytheon to address issues facing Cobra Dane before those problems turned critical.
The award is divided into the system, subsystem and component-level categories.
The U.S. Navy won at the subsystem and component levels for its management of fighter aircraft computer subsystems and oversight of tires, which are classified as components.
Col. Todd Wiest, Air Force senior materiel leader for surveillance systems, said the Cobra Dane team worked with the Air Force Space Command and Missile Defense Agency to gather funds for the maintenance effort.
The Air Force awarded Raytheon a $25 million contract modification in December 2017 to maintain Cobra Dane.
Raytheon worked to identify and fix the radar system’s issues at 10 percent less than the expected cost, the Air Force noted.
Cobra Dane is designed to collect data on foreign ballistic missile events and selected space launches.
