| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Department of War (DOW) announced today a two-year investment totaling nearly $1.8 million made in the Great Plains Innovation Network (GPIN) of Manhattan, Kansas for a reverse engineering activity for obsolescent defense-critical parts missing technical data packages. This announcement was awarded on August 27, 2025, but this announcement was delayed due to the government shutdown. The project, funded through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy (OASW(IBP))'s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program, will culminate with updated engineering documentation for manufacturability and low-rate initial production opportunities for at least three prototypes of critical obsolescent assemblies.
"This is an important effort as some of our most important legacy systems are to some degree unsustainable as the original equipment manufacturers are no longer in our industrial base," said the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy Michael Cadenazzi. "At the end of the project, the United States will have a more resilient and competitive supply chain as a result of the collaboration we've made possible between GPIN and Kansas State University, and others across the Midwest as they forge new partnerships."
GPIN will partner with Kansas State University (KSU) to train interns and non-traditional defense contractors on the process of generating technical data packages (e.g., bills of material, computer aided design models, and quality documentation) for defense-critical parts and components for which technical data no longer exists. This will open more competitive opportunities across the defense industrial base (DIB) to a wider pool of performers by enabling them to bid on parts and assemblies' contracts with known data, while limiting design workaround requirements to support the manufacture of various platforms.
Some companies working in the DIB have gone out of business and left no technical data packages behind to support future defense manufacturing needs. This investment supports the Secretary of War's priority of Rebuilding the Military by leveraging the Defense Logistics Agency's parts catalog to target high-demand parts and assemblies that are no longer procurable to design data packages that will support future defense-critical manufacturing needs.
Since the IBAS Program's inception in 2014, the Innovation Capability and Modernization (ICAM) Office has invested over $2.6 billion across 204 projects to restore domestic manufacturing capacity and capability. ICAM is part of OASW(IBP)'s Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) Directorate within the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Resilience. For more information on MCEIP, please visit: https://www.businessdefense.gov/ibr/mceip/index.html.
About the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy (OASW(IBP))
The OASW(IBP) works with domestic and international partners to forge and sustain a robust, secure, and resilient industrial base enabling the warfighter, now and in the future. The OASW(IBP)'s Innovation Capability and Modernization (ICAM) Office, which manages the IBAS Program, provides DOW with key capabilities to achieve the strategic aims of Department priorities and Presidential Executive Orders. These call for a strong, resilient, responsive, and healthy national industrial base that can respond at-will to national security requirements.
