The U.S. Navy awarded five $15 million conceptual design (CD) contracts for the new guided missile frigate (FFG(X) program today: Austal USA, Huntington Ingalls Industreis [HII], Lockheed Martin [LMT], Fincantieri’s Marinette Marine, and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works [GD].
The CD awards are intended to reduce the program risk by allowing industry to mature designs more quickly to meet Navy-directed capability requirements.
The CD phase lasts 16 months, ending in June 2019, which aims to facilitate maturing the various designs and help the service better understand cost and capability issues across various options.
The Navy said the CD efforts “will inform the final specifications that will be used for the detail design and construction request for proposal that will deliver the required capability for FFG(X).”
The awards include options that, if exercised, raise each award’s value up to $23 million each.
Next the service will move to a full and open detail design and construction (DD&C) competition and award in FY ’20 one winner. That second phase will not be strictly limited to these winners, the Navy said last month (Defense Daily, Jan. 9).
Offerors for this CD phase had to have a parent design demonstrated at sea and paired with a domestic shipyard for possible production.