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NEWS | July 27, 2020

NSWC PCD Hosts Virtual Industry Day Event

By Susan H. Lawson NSWC PCD

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) held their annual Other Transaction Authority (OTA) Industry Day event for expeditionary warfare virtually July 20.

The Industry Day event was technology focused bringing together Warfare Center technical program managers, senior scientists, senior systems engineers, project managers, and project engineers. This allowed the government to share its mission needs and the OTA multiple party teams to share their state-of-the-art technologies and technical solutions.

Warfare Center project engineers and project managers were invited to attend the event.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s event presented unique challenges with maintaining social distancing resulting in a virtual event.

“With respect to prototyping new ideas, our Navy needs to move rapidly and relevantly,” said Todd Holland, NSWC PCD director for mine warfare prototyping.  “The OTA concept allows us to attract non-traditional and small businesses partners to help widen our understanding of new technology so we can clearly focus on fleet needs.”

Five diverse multiple party teams (MPTs) comprise NSWC PCD’s OTAs:  Florida State University Expeditionary Warfare Prototyping MPT, Textron Systems, Applied Research Associates Expeditionary Warfare Consortium, Rapid Expeditionary Solutions MPT, and CSS Werx, LLC.  All agreements went into effect June 2019 and have a combined ceiling of $100 million.

“The expeditionary warfare OTAs are unique in that the MPTs have maximum flexibility to on-and-off ramp their team members to meet specific Navy technology requirements,” said Jenetta Langston, NSWC PCD agreements officer.

Holly Gardner, director of strategy and engagement, said, “NSWC PCD is not only committed to our country and being the undisputed technical expert throughout the littoral battlespace, but to being an active partner in our community.  The expeditionary OTA allows us to tap into the wealth of resources from our regional industry and academia to solve technology capability gaps while helping us strengthen our partnerships with those in our regional ecosystem.”

OTAs provide a non-Federal Acquisition Regulation based method to acquire prototype capabilities and allow for those prototypes to transition into production OTs.  Leveraged appropriately, the OTAs provide the government with access to state-of-the art technology solutions from traditional and non-traditional defense contractors to fill the Navy’s technology gaps.