Defense Business Alert

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, readying to grow its tactical and target drone businesses, has opened a new facility, teamed with another contractor to bolster its capacity and hired a former four-star Air Force general as a consultant.

The Pentagon late last month proposed amending defense acquisition regulations to "encourage contractors to propose commercial or non-Government standards and industry-wide practices that meet the intent of military specifications and standards."

The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental is updating its guidebook for using other transaction agreements after the Government Accountability Office upheld a protest against one of the organization’s production agreements.

Amazon Web Services, the largest commercial cloud provider in the world, sees the Defense Department as central to a federal sector that's been slow to modernize its IT infrastructure, but has just started to embrace commercial cloud technologies.

The Missile Defense Agency's reliance on undefinitized contracts -- which the military uses to authorize companies to begin work on weapons projects before agreeing to final terms -- has increased dramatically over the last five years, according to a congressional audit.

The head of the Air Force Sustainment Center told lawmakers Thursday the intellectual property that supports weapon system development has become more valuable than the actual hardware -- a shift that has sparked some concern among lawmakers and the Defense Department as they struggle to negotiate with industry for access to those data rights.

The Pentagon is seeking to bolster its DIBNow system, a business intelligence and analytics capability focused on the industrial base, according to the head of the Defense Department's manufacturing and industrial base policy shop.

The Federal Trade Commission said this week it is imposing conditions on Northrop Grumman to ensure continued competition in the missile systems market following Northrop's acquisition of Orbital ATK.

Robins Air Force Base, GA, will build a blue-suit heavy maintenance enterprise for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, the second major intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to try a new sustainment approach there in as many years.