By Carlo Munoz
The Navy is seeking industry solicitations to support the development, construction and support of the initial tranche of the service’s new Ship-To-Shore Connector program, according to a draft request for proposals (RFP) issued this week.
That initial batch of SSC ships will include “detail design and construction” of up to eight ships, along with associated “spares, interim support…engineering and industrial services, software support services [and] shipment of craft,” according to the draft RFP issued on March 1.
The first eight ships stated in the RFP will be primarily test and training craft, but also will cover production variants of the ship, the notice states. Industry submissions will be due to the Navy by the end of this month, it adds.
Defense Department acquisition chief Ashton Carter has tagged the SSC effort as an acquisition category 1 (ACAT1) priority.
A Boeing [BA] and Marinette Marine development team is up against a joint effort by L-3 Communications [LLL] and Textron Marine and Land Systems [TXT] to secure the $4 billion program. The anticipated 80-ship SSC build, once complete, will replace the sea service’s current ship-to-shore hovercraft known as the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) ship built by Textron.
The industry teams had anticipated the release of the RFP as early as the tail end of fiscal year 2010. However, issues raised last September during a Navy Gate Review (NGR) over specific elements of the proposal prompted the delay.
As part of their proposals, the SSC industry teams will have to provide the Navy preliminary versions of the program’s integrated master plan and associated software development strategy, as well as an initial “Sustainment Data Delivery Plan” and “Preliminary Reliability, Availability and Maintainability Program Plan” for the ship.
Details of that integrated master plan will also include information on each offerer’s “design and engineering approach” to the SSC, along with detailed plans on how each program team plans to build and manage development and construction of the vessel, the notice states. Command officials will also weigh past performance of the offerers as part of their evaluations.
Already well versed in the LCAC program, Ray Pilcher, Textron’s vice president for marine systems, said the Textron team still has “a lot of our LCAC engineers and a lot of our LCAC know-how” that it will lean upon during the competition.
“It is a unique world,” Pilcher said during a Jan. 20 interview before the RFP release. “It is not like deep ‘V’ displacement hulls and it is not like an aircraft. It is a different world with different laws that apply.”
Taking a thinly veiled shot at SSC competitor Boeing, Pilcher noted that for a company whose main area of expertise has been in aviation and not ships, the sea service’s request “may be a little more daunting.”
However, Boeing’s SSC program manager Greg Peterson said such criticisms unfairly categorized the company’s proposal as being out of synch with what the Navy is looking for in an LCAC replacement.
“The reason Boeing is in this, and has allocated the resources to do [this]…is the preliminary specs that was put out a year ago really defines well what the customer wants,” Peterson said during a separate Jan. 20 interview.