The Navy recently published a Request For Information (RFI) seeking industry information on technologies related to long endurance small unmanned surface vessels (LE sUSVs).
“The Government wants to understand the market space and potentially work with vendors to close identified gaps for a rapid fielding Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA),” the notice, published under an undated timeline on June 6, said.
The notice was published by Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division, Fla. It specifically falls under Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatant’s PMS-340 Naval Special Warfare program office.
Unmanned and Small Combatants.
Responses to the RFI will be used by the government to identify potential future actions, but no submitted topics have a guarantee of ultimately being funded.
The RFI listed several basic goals/requirements that the government seeks responses to, even if a respondent cannot meet all of them. This includes a desire the LE sUSV be transportable via Afloat Forward Staging Base-type ships; handling during operations requires fewer than six people; vehicles are towable by the host craft; vehicles should be able to perform seven-day missions in sea state two with a cruising speed of one knot; vehicles can hold station within 15 meters in sea state two with 15 knot winds, and capable of seamlessly switching modes of navigation if one fails or is denied.
Payload goals include that the vehicle have the ability to find, fix and track a target autonomously without input from the operator; able to carry up to 20-pound interchangeable mission-configurable intelligence payloads for the full seven-day operation while assuming a five-watt average power draw; and two operators should be able to change payloads and return the vehicle to mission-ready status within 90 minutes.
The Navy said lithium ion batteries are acceptable for the vehicle, but more information on batteries used is requested and it generally wants these LE sUSVs to operate on energy sources that can be produced, refueled or recharges in austere environments.
The government said RFI responses are limited to five pages and cannot include classified information. The technology description/solution impact section should describe the respondent’s technology approach with future uses, benefits of their choice over other technologies, and estimated technical readiness level.
The Navy noted that “rapid fielding requires commercial off the shelf (COTS) or minimum Technology Readiness Level of 7.”
The government also wants the respondents to describe industry’s current and future capability to produce these technologies.
The Navy said a vendor should be able to deliver a test article within six months of order and wants submissions to include the lead time of a single system.
A June 6 update to the original May 3 notice changed responses to be due by June 24.
This RFI is seemingly unrelated to a January Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) solicitation for affordable production-ready sUSVs that would explode on contact with targets. That solicitation seemed geared toward the DoD Replicator initiative, which seeks to counter Chinese advantages in mass of systems by fielding thousands of attritable autonomous systems within two years (Defense Daily, Jan. 29).