Hi Parsifal, great first posts - thanks for your research and input.
I noted in the same Feb 2014 Congressional Research Report, a couple of items which may clarify your earlier comment regarding the relevance of any US primary listing for Alexium ahead of any successful trial and supply contract from DOD. It's not conclusive but:
P11
U.S.-based companies need the protections afforded by the Berry Amendment.
P14.
The two major differences between the BAA (Buy American Act
) and the Berry Amendment are that (1) the BAA applies only to federal government contracts to be carried out within the United States, while the Berry Amendment, which is for defense contracts only, is not limited to contracts within the United States; and (2) the BAA requires that “substantially all” of the costs of foreign components not exceed 50% of the cost of all components (thus, an item can be of 51% domestic content and still be in compliance with the BAA) while the Berry Amendment requires that items be 100% domestic in origin.
There's also a reference to uniform supply for the Afghan Nat. Army and Afghan Nat. Police as mentioned by Pinto a few times.
P20
- Section 826 of H.R. 4310 requires that textiles procured by DOD for the production of military uniforms for the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police must be in compliance with the Berry Amendment.
I could be on the wrong track but my thinking is that the sunset extension clause for supply of FR uniforms to January 2015 was to coincide with the end of Operation Enduring Freedom (Dec 14) and scaledown of deployed forces. Thereby the immediate need of a more cost effective/enviro friendly FR solution isn't pressing, but that review of this option and identification of a successful candidate provides an opportunity to outfit current forces as demand occurs. Ie staggered, but steady FR uniform rollout across all forces on a scaled requirement of need... Desk jockeys last in line. Steady, small(!) contracts for the winning supplier.
(Two interesting links: procurement notice for FRACU supply in 2010, checkout the order sets and time period:
https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=19b5fa756ea9eecae68095b176172b15&tab=core&_cview=1. And, current US forces :
http://www.globalfirepower.com/coun...etail.asp?country_id=united-states-of-america)
The current short-term Berry Amendment Waiver extension might also be to outfit the Afghan army more so than the withdrawing American forces .. ?
http://www.tencate.com/news/2014/Te...tract-for-delivery-of-TenCate-Defender-M.aspx
Parsifal, there's also an earlier (March 2013) report by the same Research org/author:
Military Uniform Procurement: Questions and Answers
https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=734729
GAO concluded that DOD had not met the statutory requirement to develop joint criteria, nor had the services sought opportunities to reduce clothing costs and collaborate on uniform inventory costs.26
This references a GAO report :
DOD Should Improve Development of Camouflage Uniforms and Enhance Collaboration Among the Services:
http://www.gao.gov/assets/650/648951.pdf
This report predominantly discusses camouflage patterns and significant potential cost savings between services in co-ordinating efforts but p39 has a background to FR-ACU, with a timeline showing initiation of FR uniform variants review to fielding the chosen FR uniform.
Cheers
yysy
Not advice so please DYOR