VirTra Inc (VTSI)

[sharpchicity]

From that link:

22 June 2021 | Performing Vendor

On 18 June 2021, in accordance with 10 U.S. Code § 2371b, The Army Contracting Command – Orlando awarded the first two Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs) for prototype development of the Synthetic Training Environment – Live Training System (STE-LTS) Force on Force (FoF) to NSTXL with Cubic Defense Applications, Inc. as the performing vendor. The first award was in support of Direct Fire, and the second was in support of Indirect Fire. Additional awards from the RFS are pending.

The announcement for this effort was originally posted here.

Looking back, I'm not really sure what i was expecting from this award. All I could think of was that maybe VirTra would announce that they're a subcontractor on this award or that the contract award would show some work being done out of Tempe? But neither have happened.

It's still worthwhile to keep in mind that none of the 5 vendors who were finalists (Amentum Services, Inc., Cubic Defense Applications, Inc., Pathfinder Systems, Inc., Raytheon Company, Saab, Inc) have patented recoil kits let alone ones that match the needs of the Army (real weapon, no attachments, etc). So any one of these could be a prime that CEO was referring to.

To add more lack of clarity, CEO said in May that there was beginning to be material work in their backlog from military opportunities. If one speculates that "material" equates to >= $100k (which already is pushing the lower bounds), that would imply orders of 30+ recoil kits/threat-fire devices. I don't think VirTra would have needed 30+ devices for demos; they probably would have only needed 5-10 or at most 20 for the few different weapons being demo'd. Additionally, As of May (https://nstxl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/STE-LTS-Industry-Day-Slides-11-FEB-21-FINAL_w-NSTXL.pdf), awards for STE-LTS were not given. I don't think there would be an order placed for VirTra hardware without a contract already awarded. All this points to thinking VirTra is involved elsewhere; SiVT under the Microsoft seems the only reasonable possibility to me, but NGSW-FC training weapons could in theory be an long-shot option.

Lastly, assuming VirTra is part of the SiVT award, I have no idea when details of that will come out. As an example, MVIS is rumored to be providing tech to Microsoft and while their CEO has hinted that they are providing hardware for Microsoft's hololens tech + the military, it hasn't been publicly announced as a win. Maybe we'll hear details come September/October after first units get released, but really this is all just a best guess. 20k IVAS headsets are supposed to have been delivered in FY2021 and another 30k IVAS headsets are supposed to be delivered in FY2022 (https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMaterial/2022/pbr/FY22_PB_brief_28MAY21.pdf), so at some point the cat has to come out of the bag...