By Geoff Fein

The Navy is expected to issue shortly a request for proposals (RFP) for Team Submarine’s Acoustic Rapid COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) Insertion (ARCI) integrator competition.

The ARCI integrator competition follows the Integrated software image solution (ISIS) imaging systems competition that occurred about a year and a half ago and the AN/BYG-1 tactical control and weapons control competition, Rear Adm. William Hilarides, program executive officer submarines (PEO Submarines), told Defense Daily recently.

“As we cycle through the whole portfolio and give our performers a chance to compete to go keep their job, which is the way I think of it, it really is the culmination of a lot of work to get us to this point,” Hilarides said of the upcoming ARCI integrator competition.

Hilarides said Lockheed Martin [LMT], which has been working ARCI, General Dynamics [GD], which has been working the AN/BYG- 1 and Raytheon [RTN], which not only works on AN/BYG-1 but on submarine torpedoes as well, all understand what PEO Submarines wants.

“They are inside our tent. They help us run these open architecture systems and the relatively unique way we run them,” he said. “[These three companies [are] all the kind of the people you would expect to be in this business and they are all at the table competing for this work.”

But whether they want to compete or not, Hilarides noted, is not something he gets into.

“I just try to make sure there are enough people who are capable of doing and who have the opportunity to bid,” he said. “I set the competition up to achieve my goals and what the government needs from an integrator.”

Each of those companies and several smaller ones are all capable of doing the work, Hilarides said. “But they would have to ask themselves whether they have the dynamic range and the resources to go compete for that kind of work because it is high pressure and high profile,” he added. “We are not very forgiving when it doesn’t go well because there are ship installs that have to be met and ship deployments that need to be supported, so we keep the pressure on them.”

While Hilarides prepares for the ARCI integrator competition, he noted there has been good news surfacing from the submarine community.

“This has been a great year for the USS Virginia (SSN-774). That flag ship continues to be the engine that powers much of our success here in Team Submarine,” he said.

While Virginia‘s first deployment was widely reported, what wasn’t was how long the newest attack submarine stayed at sea.

“What didn’t get as wide an airing was the 85 percent of her six months was at sea, which is an incredible OPTEMPO,” he said. “Two and a half months continuous at sea. That’s very good, particularly for a lead ship and a bunch of technologies that are relatively new.”

The Navy is also committed to taking lessons learned from Virginia and her sister ship, the USS Texas, and putting those into the future Block IV buys, Hilarides noted.

“We are committed to harvesting what we have learned from Virginia‘s and Texas‘ first major availability. Three or four times in a ship’s life we take it off line for a period of time, roughly a year, and put the ship into dry dock and take apart the things you could only fix when you have a long time in a dry dock,” he said.

Those “things” include valves, propulsors, and stern planes, he added.

Virginia will go into her first availability this fall at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, N.H. Texas will enter her availability a year later at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Hawaii, Hilarides added.