NSWC IHD Announces Public-Private Partnership Agreement with the United States Bomb Technician Association

NSWC IHD Announces Public-Private Partnership Agreement with the United States Bomb Technician Association

By NSWC IHD Public Affairs

Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Division (NSWC IHD) officially announced the signing of a Public-Private Partnership (P3) Agreement with the United States Bomb Technician Association (USBTA), under the command's Center for Industrial and Technical Excellence (CITE) designation, in December.

"The USBTA is honored and excited to expand our incredible relationship with NSWC Indian Head," said USBTA President Sean Dennis. "We look forward to being even more involved in the research, testing, and evaluations of EOD Technologies and energetics with this partnership agreement in place."

NSWC IHD received the CITE designation in May 2014, for depot maintenance and military arsenal activities. CITE is a statutory authority allowing P3s to perform work related to the command's core competencies. This designation allows the Navy to more efficiently maintain an organic energetics capability and manage under-utilized capacity.

Under this 10-year agreement, NSWC IHD and USBTA will work together to provide test, evaluation, and demonstration and assessment services for Energetics and Energetic Systems. This includes Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) related technologies, and Explosive Energetic threat and precursor threat Detection Equipment to be used by DoD, Joint Service Explosive Ordnance Disposal EOD (JSEOD), DoD physical security personnel, and civilian law enforcement personnel.

"NSWC IHD is increasingly being called on to provide our T&E expertise to the warfighters in the EOD community. This agreement with USBTA will leverage experts on both sides to do what is necessary to win the fight and bring them home safely," said NSWC IHD Commanding Officer CAPT Steve Duba. "Relationships such as these are integral to the work being done to further these efforts."

"These partnerships are so powerful and dynamic in how we're going to approach business. Not only are they the right thing to do, but you can see how productive they are when you take advantage of the strengths each bring to the table." said NSWC IHD Technical Director Ashely Johnson. "The marriage of these two strengths is really where the power is. It's very exciting for us to do this."

NSWC IHD - a field activity of the Naval Sea Systems Command and part of the Navy's Science and Engineering Establishment - is the leader in ordnance, energetics, and EOD solutions. The Division focuses on energetics research, development, testing, evaluation, in-service support, manufacturing and disposal; and provides warfighters solutions to detect, locate, access, identify, render safe, recover, exploit and dispose of explosive ordnance threats.