6 Companies Awarded Contracts to Start Work on Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle
The Navy today awarded six companies contracts to take the first steps in determining what the service’s Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle will look like.
After adjusting its acquisition approach to adhere to congressional code, the Navy today announced $42 million in contracts for LUSV studies, with Austal USA, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Fincantieri Marinette, Bollinger Shipyards, Lockheed Martin and Gibbs & Cox each winning about $7 million to kick off work on the program.
The Navy anticipates the companies finishing the work by August 2021, but options could extend the work to May 2022. The contracts’ total value with options is $59.48 million.
“These contracts were established in order to refine specifications and requirements for a Large Unmanned Surface Vessel and conduct reliability studies informed by industry partners with potential solutions prior to release of a Detail Design and Construction contract,” Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez told USNI News in a statement.
“The studies effort is designed to provide robust collaboration with government and industry to assist in maturation of platform specifications, and ensure achievable technical requirements are in place for a separate LUSV DD&C competition.”
The contract announcement comes after the Navy had to alter its acquisition approach for LUSV due to lawmakers’ concern over the untested technology being rolled out too quickly.
“The LUSV studies will support efforts that facilitate requirements refinement, development of an affordable and effective platform; provide opportunities to continue maturing the performance specifications and conduct analysis of alternative design approaches; facilitate reliability
improvements and plans for government-furnished equipment and mechanical and electrical systems; and support development of cost reduction and other affordability initiatives,” Hernandez said.....MUCH MORE
The Navy had planned to use a similar acquisition approach for LUSV as it did with the new guided-missile frigates, where it issued concept design awards to several vendors to help the Navy finalize its requirements, and then issued a detailed design and construction contract to a single bidder, USNI News understands.
An Updated Development Plan...
