Minerva Engineering Announces Its First Sole Source Award and Priming Opportunity with The US Government: Technical and Engineering Services for Enhancing Warfighter Performance In Existing Operational Air Force, Joint and Coalition Air and Space Warfighting Systems

Phoenix, Arizona - September 23, 2004

Minerva Engineering announced today that it has been awarded its first ever sole-source award as prime contractor to AFRL Human Effectiveness Directorate, Warfighter Readiness Division (AFRL/HEA) in Mesa, AZ. This award is significant in that it is also Minerva Engineering's first prime contract with the US Government.

Minerva Engineering will provide all necessary personnel, management, administrative and technical services required to provide technical and engineering services to design, develop, test and evaluate, validate operational competency-based methods and tools for enhancing Warfighter performance in the Air Force, Joint, and Coalition Air and Space Warfighting Systems. This effort will create processes and tools for Live-Virtual-Constructive Warfighter Training while assessing performance in competency-based training and rehearsal situations. These processes and tools will be used to enhance Distributed Mission Training (DMT) to support Distributed Mission Operations (DMO). A key element of this work will require Minerva Engineering to provide engineering design and architecture capability for untethered technologies to be interchangeable for identified Joint Close Air Support (JCAS) simulation systems.

"This is an extremely important opportunity for us" commented Robert La Bella, President and Director of Business Development. "This is our first opportunity to make use of Public Law 108-183, The Veterans Benefits Act of 2003, as a means for obtaining prime contracts with the government."

"We are very excited about the opportunity to bring our tradition of excellent cost, schedule and technical performance to our partners at AFRL/HE" said Mr. La Bella.

Minerva Engineering became a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business in September of 2003 with the inclusion of several key members of the technical staff that also happen to be Service-Disabled Veterans as owners of the company. PL 108-183 establishes SDVOSB set-aside authority for agency and prime contractor contract managers to award sole-source contracts or to restrict competition for these contracts to SDVOSBs.

Minerva Engineering provides systems engineering, software engineering and electro-mechanical integration and prototyping services for government space systems and C4ISR tactical systems and components. Minerva Engineering is a private company founded in 1997 and maintains its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, with offices in Washington DC and Huntsville, AL.