The Navy awarded Massachusetts-based Beacon Interactive Systems a contract to transform its Beacon software platform into a new digital platform to help manage and sustain forward-deployed Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), the company said Tuesday.
Beacon said the award will have it “evolve” its existing Beacon Platform into the Forward Logistics Expeditionary Platform (FLEX). The contract scope covers development of FLEX, starting for configuring Beacon’s existing software and informed by “iterative and active engagement with end-users.”
While the company did not disclose the contract value, it told Defense Daily the start date was April 19.
The company noted it will be collaborating with another small business with UUV sustainment experience, Proteq, to create a solution that gathers together near-real-time awareness of a disparate UUV fleet.
“FLEX’s fleet-wide coordination of maintenance and UUV operations at the edge will shorten repair timelines and increase asset availability while providing visibility into readiness, configuration management, operations, and logistics,” the company said in a statement.
Beacon argued the FLEX data model will then be set to become the basis from which “well-provenanced data analytics can inform mission critical impacts in contested logistics environments.”
“This contract is an exciting extension of our ability to support the warfighter at the edge – especially as the Navy pivots to the Pacific,” Beacon President and Chief Technology Officer Mike MacEwen said in a statement.
The company noted in previous work for the Navy it developed software solutions in use across over 200 Navy ships, 19 ship classes and several land-based facilities.
Beacon claimed with FLEX becoming the newest version if its digital suite this will “revolutionize” management and sustainment of unmanned systems across domains and platforms including underwater, remotely operated vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.
“With this award and working with the U.S. Navy end users to give them the capabilities they deserve, we will expand our expertise and offerings in providing maintenance, operations, and analytics at the edge, especially for unmanned and remotely operated vehicles. We will be pursuing additional opportunities within the Navy as well as the Air Force and Army,” Wes Hallman, Beacon executive vice president of business development, told Defense Daily in a statement.
“The exciting thing is that what we are doing has dual use applicability. We see opportunities in additional markets where unmanned vehicles are increasingly important,” he added.
Beacon was one of several small businesses selected by the Army in 2021 to participate in a cohort as it examined ideas to apply sensor and remote tracking capabilities for sustainment to its future fleet of Robotic combat Vehicles (Defense Daily, July 9, 2021).