The Department of the Air Force, Air Forces Europe, 3rd Air Force, 48th Fighter Wing, 48th Maintenance Group has a requirement for an acquisition framework to support the procurement of U-A hardware and software with an emphasis on the integration of the resulting materiel into the existing and future U-A communications backbone.

U-A, headquartered at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is a major command (MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). It is also the air component for two Department of Defense (DoD) unified combatant commands — EUCOM, which serves the U.S. component of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and AFRICOM, which oversees security cooperation programs that assist African nations in building their own security capacity. The Commander of U-A is responsible for delivering full-spectrum options to the Combatant Commander; leading and supporting Joint, Coalition, NATO, and Warfighting Headquarters operations; and promoting regional stability through focused theater engagement. As part of this mission, U-A trains and equips USAF units pledged to NATO and maintains combat-ready wings based from Great Britain to Turkey. U-A plans, conducts, controls, coordinates, and supports air and space operations in Europe and parts of Asia and Africa to achieve U.S. national and NATO objectives. The command’s inventory of aircraft is ready to perform close air support, air interdiction, air defense, in-flight refueling, long-range transport, and support of maritime operations.

As the air component for both EUCOM and AFRICOM, U-A executes the Air Component missions with forward-based airpower and infrastructure to conduct and enable theater and global operations. U-A directs air operations in a theater spanning three continents, covering more than 19 million square miles, and containing 104 independent states. The U-A mission is to defend vital U.S. interests, deter aggression, and deepen relationships with Allies and partners by projecting combat-ready airpower in Europe and Africa. Its priorities include anti-access areadenial capabilities, integrated air and missile defense, intelligence and information sharing, command and control, and agile combat employment.

• Address the acquisition framework to support the procurement of U-A hardware and software with an emphasis on integration of the resulting materiel into the existing and future U-A communications backbone. The backbone encapsulates the core components of the U-A communications infrastructure to include the high-capacity network segments that provide the primary paths for data traffic across different parts of the U-A network.
• Provide technology refreshes and system modernization solutions within the primary users’ areas of responsibility including the acquisition, integration, and product support services of theater deployable communications, base information technology (IT) infrastructure, and cloud services.
• Implement technology refreshes of main operating bases (MOBs) and existing Geographically Separated Units (GSUs), establish an enduring infrastructure and systems for new GSUs, design and implement a U-A distributed and resilient enterprise hybrid cloud capabilities supporting Agile Combat Employment (ACE), and develop synthetic distributed and hosted modeling and simulation training environments and systems.
• Enhance U-A Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) information sharing capabilities and the distributed Combined Joint All-Domain Command & Control (cJADC2) infrastructure, enabling operations in a denied, degraded, intermittent or limited (DDIL) environment integrated into the USAFE modernized C2 architecture utilizing the following primary capability pools:
  • U-A Training Exercises
  • Communications Infrastructure Upgrades
  • C2 Infrastructure Investment
  • Integration into U-A C2 Backbone
    • Battle Management and Defense Systems
    • Tactical C2