By Carlo Munoz
The Navy has awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] an $83.8 million contract to continue to provide sonar systems for the sea service’s submarine fleet, according to service and company statements.
Under the terms of the deal, Lockheed Martin will “design and manufacture hardware” for the Acoustic Rapid Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (A-RCI) program, according to a Jan. 13 Navy contract notice. Overseen by Naval Sea Systems Command, “the contract provides funding for the development and production of the A-RCI and common acoustics processing…the U.S. submarine fleet and for foreign military sales,” it said.
Under the terms of the deal, Lockheed Martin will continue to upgrade the current submarine fleet with the A-RCI system, according to a Jan 13 company statement. That said, those upgrades will be phased into the fleet in 18- to 24-month increments, “allowing the government to take advantage of commercial information technology,” it noted.
The company will also begin development and integration work on the A-RCI system for eventual deployment on board the service’s newest Virginia-class subs. Taking into account that upgrade work, along with follow-on options included in the deal, the total potential value of the deal swells to $2.1 billion.
A large majority of the work will be done at the company’s facilities in Manassas, Va., with the remaining work carried out at its Clearwater, Fla., location, according to the Navy contract.
The company has been the sole provider of upgrade work to the A-RCI platform since the system was introduced into the fleet beginning in 2000, Jack Gellen, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of anti-submarine warfare and integration programs, said in an interview with Defense Daily yesterday.
The key to the company’s success on sustaining the sonar system, according to Gellen, was the decision to separate hardware and software development while utilizing COTS technology to upgrade both elements of the platform.
“If you go back to pre A-RCI…it took us about eight years from thought to getting the first system in the water certified. When you start and really look at it, you can argue it [takes] five to eight years,” he said.
But by leveraging COTS technologies for A-RCI hardware, as well as an open architecture process for software engineering on the system, program officials “are [meeting that] requirement to getting something in the water in two years,” he said.
Company officials plan to carry out software updates every two years on submarines already outfitted with some variant of the A-RCI system, according to Gellen. Hardware integration for the fleet, he added, will take place on a four-year cycle. “So when I get new software I can put it on the old hardware or when I get new hardware I can put old software on,” he said.
However, program managers plan to integrate Virginia-class submarines currently under construction outfitted with the A-RCI hardware once they come off the production line, according to Gellen.
“If you look at the sub fleet, there are roughly 60 boats. So if you look at it, [the Navy] is going to do a boat every four years, [which]…is somewhere on the order of magnitude of 15 systems that we deliver a year,” he said.
But those scheduled upgrade integration timelines can also be adjusted to meet the Navy’s needs, due to the flexibility that COTS technology brings to the table, Gellen noted.
“Those are planning numbers and then you have the real world, he said of the two-year and four-year upgrade cycles. “[The Navy] work around those and that is where the [COTS] flexibility comes in. If someone has to go off on an important mission and needs the capability, you can adjust it because you have some flexibility.”
While the use of COTS applications provides the Navy some flexibility on the system itself, the terms of the contract award also provides the sea service some flexibility in terms of the program’s execution over the long term.
The follow-on options in the A-RCI deal cover the next seven years of the program, with the Navy given the decision to renew the next iteration of the upgrade and sustainment work on A-RCI each year, according to Gellen.
“We are doing lifetime support, because we do not have to buy 30 years of spares because we know–we being the Navy–because the Navy knows in four years they are going to update something,” he said. “So they have to do something. They do not have to come to Lockheed Martin, but [they] have options to come to us.”
But Gellen noted that that the level of confidence among Lockheed Martin officials that the Navy would pick up those contract options was fairly high.
“The best feedback, I would say, is that they awarded it to us and if you look at the number of offers received, I would claim that is because everyone knows we are doing a really good job and the Navy is happy with what we are doing,” he said. “All indications are that it is a very efficient way and…apparently it is the path the submarine force is taking for their combat systems.”