Part of DISA’s role includes managing the video feeds from these aircraft, and ensuring they are shared in near-real-time to relevant parties. (Air Force / Vernon Young Jr.)
WASHINGTON — Booz Allen Hamilton has been awarded a production agreement worth up to $1.86 billion for the Defense Information Systems Agency’s zero trust network architecture called Thunderdome, a DISA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
The contract, announced on July 28, is a follow-on production award for the company as DISA transitions Thunderdome from prototyping to production. The announcement did not include how much the contract was worth, however a DISA spokesperson said today that “the total agreement ceiling is $1.86 billion.”
“This award has been structured as an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ)-like award so other DOD agencies and military departments can leverage the OTA [other transaction authority] over the five-year period of performance,” the spokesperson told Breaking Defense. According to the contract announcement, that would be from August 2023 to August 2028.
In March, DISA announced Booz had produced a prototype of Thunderdome and laid “a zero-trust technology foundation.” The company was awarded a $6.8 million prototype contract last January for the effort.
Under the zero-trust concept, rather than letting users who pass security checks have free reign over data, there would be continual checks to make sure each user should be allowed to access different information — essentially refusing to ever fully “trust” users on the network. The Pentagon has outlined a goal for the entire department to meet a baseline level of zero trust requirements by fiscal 2027.
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“Awarding this Thunderdome production agreement is an important step on our zero-trust journey and furthers DISA’s mission to provide warfighters with a more secure operating environment,” DISA director Lt. Gen. Robert J. Skinner said in a statement. “While DISA leverages these capabilities on our cyber terrain, this full-scale production agreement can be used to assist the military services and other DOD components in implementing key zero-trust activities.”
A prototype for Thunderdome was initially expected to be completed around the middle of last year, but DISA announced it would be delaying the program until January 2023 to include the Pentagon’s classified Secure Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet).
“The onset of the war in Ukraine has highlighted the importance of SIPRNet and the need to ensure the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has a modernized classified network that will securely protect data,” DISA said in a July 28, 2021 press release. “SIPRNet is used by DOD and military services around the world to transmit classified information, up to and including, information classified as secret, however, the framework is antiquated and needs updating.”
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