The final day of the Sea-Air-Space Expo 2024 began with a question-and-answer session with representatives from the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) and concluded with an overview of NAVAIR’s Fleet Readiness Centers.  

Irma Alexander, deputy director of small business for NAVAIR Headquarters, and Larry Butts, deputy director of small business for Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), hosted the panel, using the opportunity to follow up with potential industry partnerships about collaborating with NAVAIR in its mission to supply the warfighter.  

“If you have some new technologies, some new efforts that you want to bring towards our leadership, I want you to come see us because we'll try to act as that conduit between yourself and our buyers because we're not the buyers. We're just in the middle,” Butts said. “I want you to utilize us because that's what we're here for.”  

Butts said small businesses are considered first when conducting market research and trying to find partners to fill the opportunities to contribute to the warfighter.  

Attendees took turns asking the panel questions regarding challenges they had faced in landing government contracts and barriers they had identified in the process. Butts said while they did not have all the answers to navigate each scenario, they urged communicating with the OSBP to get potential partners in contact with those best suited to assist them.  

Alexander urged small businesses to “do your homework” by performing market research before approaching a partnership with the government, citing a recent success story wherein an individual saw a need for the warfighter and developed an innovative solution.  

“I had a small business come to me about a year and a half ago with an innovation that would solve a problem we had been experiencing for years,” she said. “He took his innovation and introduced it throughout the fleet, he took it to the warfighter, he worked his way around. And this week, he will be meeting with the principal deputy manager and his team. But he came [to that meeting] having done his homework.”  

Butts urged that contacting the NAVAIR OSBP helps open a lot of doors for small businesses.  

“Please contact our small business liaison officer and register your company with NAVAIR,” Butts said. “Once you’ve done that, you’re going to start a chain of events that will eventually get you a one-on-one conversation with one of our deputies.”  

Interested parties can contact the NAVAIR Office of Small Business Programs at https://www.navair.navy.mil/osbp/.  

The final NAVAIR panel featured Lt. Col. Daniel Jewett, Strategic Military Director for Commander Fleet Readiness Center (COMFRC) and Becky Thacker, director of the COMFRC Business Development and Capability Management office, addressing the Fleet Readiness Centers Enterprise Capability. Jewett started by giving a historical context, stating the then-Department of War created the first aviation maintenance facility in 1919 in North Island, San Diego, California.  

“Over the past 100 years, our need for such facilities has grown and now we have an enterprise of such facilities we call the Fleet Readiness Centers,” he said. “The FRCs provide shore-based depot level maintenance to support the naval aviation effort.”  

The main depot level FRCs are Fleet Readiness Center East, located at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina; Fleet Readiness Center Southeast is housed at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida; and Fleet Readiness Center Southwest is located at Naval Air Station North Island, California. The depots perform the vast majority of engine, airframe and support equipment repair related to naval aviation.  

“We are not one business; we are actually four,” Thacker said, repeating a line said by a former FRC executive director. While the FRCs primarily handle aircraft, engine and component repair as well as manufacturing, “we also have a wide range of technical services. Fleet Support Teams are one of those engineering and logistics [that are type/model/series] specific, working for the program offices at NAVAIR. And providing production support to the depots for those products, but also that very valuable fleet support and production.”  

Thacker said the FRC artisans often troubleshoot issues, including reverse-engineering items, in order to solve problems, but stressed that collaboration between FRCs and industry is critical.  

“We work not only with other services and agencies, but we work a great deal with industry partners,” she said. “We’re doing the synergy between the contractor and government that neither can do on their own. That makes us better together.”  

The Sea-Air-Space Exposition, founded in 1965, brings the U.S. defense industrial base, private-sector U.S. companies and key military decision-makers from the sea services together for an annual innovative, educational, professional event. It is now the largest maritime exposition in the U.S. and an invaluable extension of the Navy League’s mission of maritime policy education and sea service support.