The US Air Force has issued a request for proposals (RPF) for the second phase of its $24bn network-centric solutions (NETCENTS) project.

All proposals for the NETCENTS 2 Enterprise Integration and Service Management requirement, will be open until 1 April, according to informationweek.com.

NETCENTS 2 is a five-year, $9bn procurement programme for a range of network services, including networking hardware and software, security, engineering and systems integration.

The air force will award six to nine contracts totalling to $460m, with a base period of three years.

Under the contract, the winner will have to provide services to support the migration of network-centric systems.

The air force, which has delayed its NETCENTS 2 RFP several times before, now wants to award the first contract in July.