Battle simulators

Tender description

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is developing options to provide an immersive Joint Fires training capability in mounted and dismounted roles, across Land, Littoral and Air domains, at individual and collective levels, to achieve greater flexibility and better value for money outcomes. The Army HQ Single Statement of User Need (SSUN) which Joint Fires Synthetic Trainer (JFST) will deliver against is: ‘The user requires an intuitive, accessible and immersive training capability to assist in the delivery of Joint Fires training for contemporary operations at individual and collective levels, in both the mounted and dismounted roles.’ Please see Annex B.1 3) for description of the current requirement. This Prior Information Notice (PIN) is an enabler to allow the authority to develop options for the delivery of JFST. It is anticipated that the MoD will undertake further premarket engagement following receipt of responses of interest to this PIN. In Issuing this PIN and engaging with the market, the MoD is not committing to carrying out any procurement in relation to the requirements stated in this PIN. If third parties are interested in engaging with the MoD in relation to the requirements stated in this PIN they must do so without sharing information that is protected by copyright or patents. The Authority intends to present the requirement to industry at premarket engagement opportunities. The contents of any briefings will be disseminated to the market via a supplementary PIN. Following responses to this primary PIN (not supplementary), bilateral discussions will be held with a range of potential suppliers including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Prime/Thin prime contractors, Subcontractors, Integrators and Independent training manager teams from across the Defence and wider commercial sector. These are expected to be held from February 2017. The selection of suppliers invited to bilateral discussions will be at the Authority's discretion. Whether or not you are invited to engage in further premarket engagement will in no way impact your eligibility to compete for any future opportunity or impact the selection of supplier(s) for tender submission or award. Participants in the premarket engagement may be requested to adhere to specific governance including appropriate Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) at the Authority's request to address issues of confidentially and conflicts of interest. The MoD will not meet any costs incurred by participation in the premarket engagement. Suppliers who wish to be considered for further premarket engagement should respond to the following questions by 12pm GMT Monday 21st November 2016 via the contact email above. Responses to the below questions should not total more than 4 sides of A4, including diagrams and font no smaller than size 11. Questions 1. What contractual delivery method(s) (e.g. Prime & subcontractors, Thin prime, Outsourced Service Integration and Management (SIAM), In-house SIAM or other) do have experience in and would you consider to offer the best VfM for the MoD? 2. Which role(s) (e.g. any described in Question 1. or other) do you have experience in providing in and would be interested providing for the JFST solution? 3. What experience of infrastructure and Intellectual Property ownership arrangement(s) (e.g. Fully managed service, MoD owned and managed, MoD owned with Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) provision or other) do you have experience of and what would provide the best Value for Money (VfM) for the MoD? 4. What experience do you have of providing customers with an open architecture, system of systems approach to minimise solution lock in and obsolescence? 5. What Commercial/(Commercial Modified)/Military off the Shelf (COTS/MOTS) solutions do you have experience providing that could be utilised in delivery of the service and how best should COTS/MOTS solutions be utilised? 6. What current or near future innovation you provided or are providing and could add value have, efficiencies or delivery performance and how? 7. What potential barriers to successful competition and delivery of a JFST solution have you had experience of and how could they be dealt with? 8. Are there any other pertinent considerations that you can evidence and you consider the MoD would benefit from assessing at this stage? (Annex B.1 3)) JFST will provide an immersive Joint Fires (JF) training capability, able to train JF integrators in both mounted and dismounted roles, across Land, Littoral and Air domains and at individual and collective levels. This simulated training environment will enable realistic and complex training that cannot be conducted live on the UK training estate, thus maintaining operational effectiveness. It will enable continuation of simulated JF integration training following the obsolescence of current systems. The system is to be based on Army 2020 refine structures (http://www.army.mod.uk/structure/33449.aspx), incorporating both mounted and dismounted JF integration capabilities, whilst capitalising on an open architecture and System of Systems Approach (SOSA) to enable flexibility in future upgrades, and future connectivity of wider Defence and international capabilities. JFST seeks to improve the training capability delivered to the Army — it will replace obsolete and unsupported capabilities and provide support to live exercises currently funded and procured through 1Arty Bde. The requirement is to provide the training media, and associated support, to provide a series of scalable capabilities for each phase of the JF training pipeline designed to fit the needs of the training audience. It will do this by delivering synthetic environments linked to a common virtual battlespace, which allow distributed components to train in either a standalone or networked capacity. It should seek to adopt a ‘Building Block’ approach to provide capability at Phase 3 career development establishments, e.g. Royal School of Artillery (RSA) and Joint Forward Air Controller Training and Standards Unit (JFACTSU); the capability for individual and CT 1&2 training at Unit lines (up to 15 locations); a CT3 establishment that is supported by a Training and Management Team (TMT); and to have a mobilised capability to support live training exercises. The JFST capability will provide coherence for the training audience as they gain familiarity with the systems and confidence as the training equipment matches the in service equipment. JFST may require elements of Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) simulation rather than focusing on just the virtual space. The JFST dependency and stakeholder lists are extensive and varied and it is anticipated that integration into existing, new and contemporary capabilities will form an extensive part of the project. The main constraints on how JFST can be delivered are: — To comply with The Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 (SDSR 15), Defence Policy for Simulation, Defence Strategic Direction, Defence Training and Education Coherence (DTEC), SOSA and Training Education Architecture (Land) (TEA(L)). — To comply with The EU Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations (DSPCR) 2011 and to demonstrate VfM, JFST supplier(s) will be chosen via competition. Execution Strategy and Delivery Approach: JFST will consider a wide range of contractual delivery models against this requirement and it is expected to present (for endorsement at Initial Gate (IG)) a preferred delivery model as the basis of a JFST competition(s).