By Geoff Fein

The Navy earlier this month awarded General Dynamics [GD] Advanced Information Systems a $21.3 million contract for the first year of a multi-year effort to provide upgrades to the tactical control system portion of the submarine combat system.

The contract could potentially be worth a lot more if the Navy provides General Dynamics work for four option years and pursues an additional five more years, currently being considered, Mike Tweed-Kent, vice president General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

General Dynamics has been the incumbent on TCS dating back to 2002, when Digital System Resources (DSR) was doing TCS work for the Navy. In 2003, General Dynamics acquired DSR (Defense Daily, Sept. 11, 2003).

“We were on DSR’s team, at that point in time supporting them with some system engineering as well as some logistics support. The following year we acquired DSR,” Tweed-Kent said.

The effort grew out of the Navy’s plans to break out TCS from the weapon control system. In the past, the two systems were integrated, Tweed-Kent said. “As they were moving toward open architecture and making things more modular, they separated them out.”

The Navy ran a full and open competition for TCS in December 2002 and again this past year, he added.

TCS is consistent with the Navy’s commitment to the whole open architecture–open business model which they call as the advanced processor build (APB), Tweed-Kent said. The Navy is evolving to take advantage of commercial hardware advances, integrate that in as a hardware platform, and on top of that bringing in software applications that provide new capability, he added.

“Especially on TCS it’s actually been noted by RDA and Navy leadership about how we implemented the business model,” Tweed-Kent said. “We believe it’s more about the open business model that fosters innovation and competition and I think you can see that just in the exceptional small business participation that’s taken place where we actually have them in the laboratory working to shared standards that enable them to bring their capabilities in for greater interoperability and scalability for the system.”

Small companies have access to the standards that then enables them to integrate right into General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems’ lab, to bring their software in and efficiently integrate it for the technical insertion process, Tweed-Kent said.

That can be seen by the amount of work small business contributes…which is a large percentage of the job, he added.

About eight small companies are on the TCS team, and Tweed-Kent acknowledged that that evolves over time. “And a significant percentage of the actual work is done by those businesses.”

Under the contract General Dynamics will develop commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware upgrades to integrate improved tactical control capabilities for multiple submarine classes, the company said.

There has been some discussion as of late on the reliance of COTS components. Some are questioning whether there is true cost avoidance while others have raised the spectre of security that comes with using off-the-shelf systems.

While Tweed-Kent noted that COTS may not be the “right answer for every system and program that’s out there.” He added that for TCS off-the-shelf systems have shown “great benefit in terms of General Dynamics’ ability to refresh on a regular basis, taking advantage of the performance enhancements that are being made in the commercial market, and to efficiently integrate that in.”

“Not only to bring in greater capability but to deal with obsolescence issues, to deal with lifecycle total cost, and I think we have seen substantial cost savings as a result of that,” he added. “And it allows then for you, when done correctly, to separate the software from the hardware so now you can more efficiently take advantage of new applications and new software that are out there.”

In terms of TCS, using COTS has been a very effective way to address the affordability challenges the Navy has as they are driving to deliver more capability to the fleet, Tweed-Kent said.

“We have seen that in the work we have done for the Navy on the Trident program, with the strategic weapon system, and I think on these kind of shipboard systems you can get some real efficiencies out of leveraging COTS,” he added.

Tweed-Kent believes TCS is all a part of General Dynamics’ advancing an open architecture approach for the Navy. “I would say this does advance what we have been bringing to the Navy in terms of innovative open architecture systems approaches as well as solutions,” he said.

“You can see the advantage of that. We were able to take TCS applications and run that on our LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) Independence’s open architecture system and integrate that software in a matter of hours,” Tweed-Kent added.

General Dynamics is not currently deploying that TCS hardware. The integration was done in the company’s systems integration lab, he added. “But it shows you the power and the capability that as you move to these open standards, and you discipline yourself to adhering to them, you get real portability in the software applications.

“I see over time this is going to really advance the Navy across the board being able, where appropriate, to share investments and capability,” Tweed-Kent said.