THE LATEST NEWS AND EVENTS

Air Force Weapons Pitch Day 2022

IS4S is Incredibly Grateful to Win First-ever “Hat Trick” at Air Force Weapons Pitch Day 2022

At the 2022 Air Force Weapons Pitch Day, IS4S “Pitched” and won an unprecedented 3 awards! No other company has ever accomplished this before. The three direct to Phase 2 SBIR awards totaled $5.5M and covered the following topic areas: Long Range Kill Chain Digital Model, Low-Cost Decoy, and Resilient Software Defined Radio for PNT. The Air Force Weapons Pitch Day consisted of a 5-minute presentation followed by a 5-minute Q&A period. This year, the Air Force received over 70 pitch topic proposals and down selected to 21 topics from 18 companies across the United States. In total, 14 companies won awards totally up to $1.83M each. IS4S was the only company to win multiple awards.

Repair Technology Engagement Exercise (REPTX)

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division

Photo by Dana Rene White

IS4S employees, Jacob Martin (left) and John Kendrick (Right) demo IS4S 3D-printed cover on the Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera cable area aboard the Self Defense Test Ship during the Aug. 25 Repair Technology Exercise, or REPTX, at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division. IS4S was one of several companies on site for the event to design a cable protection solution.

RESILIENT-EMBEDDED GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM/INERTIAL NAVIGATION SYSTEM

IS4S selected by AFLCMC to continue leading the Resilient-EGI program

HUNTSVILLE, AL – The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) recently awarded Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S) with a $95M Phase 2 Other Transaction Agreement for the Resilient-Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System (R-EGI) development and prototype program.

IS4S successfully completed R-EGI Phase 1, pioneering a Continuous Competition Design Agent (CC-DA) approach that brought together the best of the industry from Booz Allen Hamilton, Strategic Technology Consulting, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Draper, Raytheon, Kearfott, GE Aviation Systems, and other companies to develop a vendor-neutral open architecture for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solutions. With the agile CC-DA in place, IS4S will iteratively converge the best elements from Phase 1 candidate designs and government insights to produce best-of-breed prototypes.

“We’re designing R-EGI to be more than a single system,” said IS4S vice president John Larson. “We’re defining an entire ecosystem for PNT and creating a design process that AFLCMC will own. The entire Phase 2 team is using modern MBSE—Model-Based System Engineering—to develop a digital engineering toolchain in an open design which is both modular and reusable across multiple platforms.”

“This approach widens the aperture and brings the technical baseline back into the government,” added Dr. Mikel Miller, IS4S vice president for PNT. “R-EGI gives the warfighter the technology needed for tactical advantage, including the latest in alternate navigation and GPS receiver technology with M code. As threats change, our PNT capability must also change. R-EGI enables us to outpace the threat.”

The R-EGI open architecture provides a clear framework to allow integration of new, adaptable technology and algorithms from across the Department of Defense, industry, and academia. When this open architecture is coupled with the novel CC-DA R-EGI development process, rapid adjustments can be made while achieving significant sustainability benefits over traditional acquisition approaches.

The convergence of Phase 1 best-of-breed designs will produce a final Government Reference Architecture with unlimited data rights for the government. IS4S also aims to deliver a production-ready, government-owned technical data package suitable for full and open competition, as well as production representative prototypes that demonstrate completeness and manufacturing readiness.

“This is what makes R-EGI different,” said Air Force R-EGI chief engineer, Jacob Campbell. “We’re not just building a new EGI; we build EGIs for aircraft today. We’re leveraging the best ideas, modern architectural and design approaches, open standards, digital engineering methods and tools, and cloud-based development. We are doing all this together with IS4S so we can build a dynamic, Resilient-EGI.”

IS4S HUNTSVILLE ACHIEVES QUALITY MANAGEMENT CERTIFICATION

IS4S Huntsville Achieves AS9100 Quality Management Certification from NSF International Strategic Registrations (NSF-ISR)

AS9100 certification for aviation, space and defense organizations demonstrates IS4S’ commitment to aerospace industry expectations.

HUNTSVILLE, AL – The IS4S Huntsville location has achieved AS9100 aerospace management systems certification from NSF-ISR, an NSF International company with a scope to provide product design and development and manufacturing services to the Federal Government and other commercial companies in the aerospace and defense industry. Certification to AS9100, a widely adopted quality management system for the aerospace industry, ensures a framework for continual improvement and access to best practices from across the aerospace industry, while serving as a precursor for IS4S to qualify as a supplier in the aviation, space and defense supply chain.

The AS9100 standard is based on ISO 9001 but encompasses additional requirements specific to the unique needs of aerospace industry prime organizations and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). These manufacturers/OEMs and their global supply base often endorse or require certification as assurance that certain base principals have been implemented. The standard also incorporates requirements of relevant industry stakeholders (e.g., product safety awareness, counterfeit controls, risk-based thinking, process validation, etc.). In addition, it is compatible with other management systems, such as ISO 14001).

"IS4S Huntsville is committed to delivering the highest quality products and services to our Federal Government and commercial customers through continual improvement and review of our Quality Management System and compliance with AS9100 and ISO 9001 along with customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements."

OTHER NEWS AND IMPORTANT WINS

IS4S AWARDED PHASE II SBIR FOLLOW-ON FOR CONVOY DRIVER ASSISTANCE SYSTEMS

Auburn Location

Yuma Proving Grounds announced an intent to award IS4S with a follow-on Phase II SBIR contract to enhance the Convoy Driver Assistance Systems. IS4S has developed, tested, and delivered a novel, self-contained GPS-based hardware unit that reliably displays the relative position between vehicles in a convoy with centimeter-level accuracy. The hardware units can be used as a valuable safety tool when executing convoy and following operations in low-visibility conditions. They also provide a means for operators to maintain precise formations during tests. IS4S will expand upon this hardware platform to provide a new navigation algorithm to perform in GPS challenged environments, enabling testing when signals are present that interfere with the GPS signal. IS4S will also expand the system to provide real-time data visualization, more extensive data logging, route planning, and an improved visual interface.

IS4S AWARDED PHASE I SBIR FOR CRUISE CONTROL ENHANCEMENT

Auburn Location

TARDEC awarded IS4S a Phase I SBIR to produce a Cruise Control Enhancement (CCE) for Tactical Wheeled Vehicles or commercial heavy trucks. This CCE will improve the fuel efficiency of either single vehicles within a convoy, or the convoy as a whole by between 3 to 5%. The CCE parameters will be tunable to adapt to a variety of vehicle types and tactical environments. This technology has applications on commercial trucks in addition to Army Tactical Wheeled Vehicles. The CCE algorithms are applicable in commercial or DoD scenarios. In addition, this technology works equally well on human-operated vehicles or various levels of autonomous ground vehicles.

IS4S AWARDED PHASE I SBIR FOR PHYSICS AIDED INERTIAL NAVIGATION

Huntsville Location

IS4S was awarded a Phase I SBIR contract to improve inertial navigation on high dynamic flight systems. This effort will produce enhanced navigation algorithms for un-aided IMUs. These algorithms will allow missiles to more effectively navigate through the severe dynamics of a missile flight. The navigators will be generic and applicable to a wide range of missiles. The algorithm parameters will be tunable to adjust to particular missile and IMU systems. This technology has potential commercial applications on many missiles and other guided munitions. The algorithms will be demonstrated interfacing with hardware IMUs to show the feasibility of incorporating them into existing product lines. The enhanced navigators would also allow lower-cost IMUs to be used in systems while still maintaining the required navigation performance.

IS4S AWARDED PHASE I SBIR FOR AUTONOMOUS CARGO HANDLING SYSTEM (ACHS)

Huntsville Location

The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) awarded IS4S an SBIR Phase I contract to research and design an Autonomous Cargo Handling System (ACHS). The ACHS is a fully autonomous robot capable of carrying cargo on and off of the US Navy/USMC Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS), as well as other military aircraft. The ACHS will enable the rapid delivery of mission-critical cargo to austere landing zones and beyond by a variety of manual, pre-planned, and fully autonomous modes. Much of the ACHS technology is leveraged from IS4S robots developed on other Government programs, which significantly reduces technical risk and development cost. When employed, the ACHS will reduce risk to our warfighters, increase the efficiency of vital resupply operations and reduce overall operational cost.