Pentagon to award $9B JWCC cloud contract mid-December
Sharon Woods, director of DISA’s Hosting and Compute Center, told reporters officials “have a very high level of confidence in the mid-December award” for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.
Sharon Woods, director of DISA’s Hosting and Compute Center, told reporters officials “have a very high level of confidence in the mid-December award” for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.
The military focused its efforts on networked warfare and the US government responded to cyberattacks.
“Regardless of the JEDI Cloud litigation outcome, the Department continues to have an urgent, unmet requirement,” reads the Pentagon briefing to members of Congress.
The Defense Department has spent over $5.3 million so far administering the stalled JEDI procurement – but that’s not counting the time of DoD lawyers engaged in over a year of legal battles.
Like JEDI, DEOS is a multi-billion dollar cloud program held up for months by protests from losing bidders. This morning, the Pentagon reaffirmed General Dynamics as the winner, but cut the contract’s estimated value nearly in half.
The Pentagon is finding alternative clouds while waiting for JEDI, Dana Deasy said, so it can upgrade them to JEDI as soon as the courts allow.
"There are a lot of autonomous systems in DoD today. There are very few, and I would say really no significant, AI enabled autonomous systems," says Shanahan, who is trying to change that.
The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center needs three things: new acquisition authorities, more staff, and the cloud. With JEDI delayed ‘potentially many more months,’ director Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan said, he’s turning to an Air Force alternative.
Amazon’s new protest to the Pentagon isn’t about getting the Defense Department to change its mind, experts say. It’s really a signal to the judge in the long-running court battle over the JEDI contract.
A judge is letting the Pentagon redo part of the flawed procurement. Amazon says the redo is itself is fatally flawed.
Michigan’s defense ecosystem and expertise makes it a special asset for production.
No current cloud, commercial or military, lets frontline troops access both classified and unclassified data from all over the world, Dana Deasy told Breaking Defense. That makes JEDI unique – and too complex to split up among multiple contractors.
One urged the Pentagon to push the embattled cloud computing contract through. Two said kill it. One said JEDI is still worth saving — but it’s running out of time.
While the judge has paused the trial to let the Pentagon redo part of the cloud computing competition, acquisition guru Bill Greenwalt warns any victory for either side will be “pyrrhic.”
President Trump fired the Pentagon Inspector General last week. Was the real reason the IG’s attempt to investigate White House interference in the JEDI contract?