By Geoff Fein
Several teams are partnering for a planned request for proposal (RFP), expected by the end of the year, for the Navy’s Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 2 upgrade to the current shipboard electronic support measures system.
BAE Systems and General Dynamics [GD] Advanced Information Systems (GD AIS) have joined forces, as have Lockheed Martin [LMT] and ITT [ITT].
A Northrop Grumman [NOC] official told Defense Daily yesterday the company will also follow the SEWIP Block 2 RFP and is considering its participation.
“If the right team is out there that provides best value to the Navy, then we will certainly pursue that team,” the official said. “We already have a very strong team with all Northrop Grumman–Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems sector and Electronic Systems sector.”
BAE and General Dynamics are proposing Sea Lightning, which according to a BAE release, “is designed to defeat increasingly sophisticated maritime threats by intercepting and classifying threat radars, particularly those on anti-ship cruise missiles.”
The Sea Lightning team “combines General Dynamics’ expertise in open architecture, naval systems, and subsystems integration with BAE Systems’ expertise in electronic warfare,” Mike Tweed-Kent, vice president and general manager of integrated combat systems for GD AIS, said. “Our team’s relevant Block 1 experience, leveraged with BAE Systems’ mature EW capabilities, will lower development cost and shorten the execution schedule.”
The Lockheed Martin-ITT team is proposing its Integrated Common Electronics Warfare System (ICEWS).
“In at-sea demonstrations this summer, ICEWS-a single enterprise solution designed to scale across all ship classes in the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet-performed successfully. This ICEWS demonstration followed land-based testing and further validated the enterprise approach that the team has taken in developing sensor systems for U.S. Navy vessels,” according to Lockheed Martin.
“The Lockheed Martin/-ITT partnership brings more than 40 years of electronic warfare capabilities and experience together in a single team,” Carl Bannar, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Radar Systems business, said. “We will provide a highly capable, modular solution that uses open systems architecture.”
For its part, Northrop Grumman brings its experience developing processors and software for the AN/SLQ-32 and in developing Multi Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW), the electronic support portion for DDG-1000, the official said. “We consider ourselves well positioned going into SEWIP.”
The official noted that Northrop Grumman determined that it was best for the Navy to promote an enterprise electronic warfare (EW) solution.
“[It was] apparent to us, [it] made more sense for the Navy to come up with an enterprise-wide solution versus just a DDG-1000 solution for next generation EW,” the official said.
“We feel we have done a great service for the Navy working on MFEW, being able to prove that a ship’s EW can reach well beyond the capability [of] SLQ-32, developed in the1970s, to now provide a comprehensive solution to the warfighter,” the Northrop Grumman official added.
SEWIP Block 2 will upgrade the Navy’s AN/SLQ-32 (V) electronic support measures system. AN/SLQ-32(V), built by Raytheon [RTN], provides early warning of enemy threats and dispenses chaff decoys to defeat attacks by guided weapons, such as anti-ship cruise missiles. The SEWIP Block 2 will upgrade the system’s receiver, antenna and combat system interface.
The Navy is expected to issue a request for proposal for SEWIP before the end of the year and award a contract in 2009, according to a source.
The Northrop Grumman official said the company has not seen a synopsis yet. “So we would not expect to see a RFP hit the streets for a another couple of weeks at least.”
“The Navy is well aware of the fact they really are crunching the schedule between now and when they will need systems to put on the first DDG-1000 and first CVN-21 class of carriers,” the Northrop Grumman official said.
It’s a good news-bad news proposition for the company, he added.
“[The good news is] our MFEW work puts us in a good position to be the only company that can hit that schedule. [The] bad news…it still is a really tight schedule. We think we can pull it off and do [it] with a risk level that is acceptable to the Navy,” the official said.