Lt. Gen. John Thompson: Space Force Eyes Prototyping Consortium Mgmt Contract Award by Year’s End

Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said the U.S. Space Force expects to award by the end of 2020 a contract for the management of the Space Enterprise Consortium, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday. 

SpEC seeks to work with nontraditional contractors to facilitate rapid prototyping of space-based technology systems for national security. 

SMC, which awarded a $100M contract to the Advanced Technology Institute in 2017 to manage the consortium, now plans to revamp the prototyping organization with a recompete contract. 

“The effort has been so successful that we’ve got a follow-on effort coming on. We’re calling it SpEC Reloaded. SpEC Reloaded, we hope to award later this year,” Thompson said Wednesday during the Ascend virtual conference. “And that’ll be a 10-year period of performance with a $12 billion ceiling on that particular contract vehicle.” 

SMC issued in March a solicitation for the potential 10-year, $12B recompete contract to find a consortium manager that will coordinate prototyping contracts between the government and industry using other transaction authorities.