By Geoff Fein
Bids for the Navy’s Integrated Topside (InTop) task order 3 competition, exploring how to combine apertures and antennas on surface ships, were turned in last week, and companies are hoping for a contract award by the end of the year.
Among those submitting bids were Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC] and several other unknown companies, according to an industry source.
InTop is an Innovative Naval Prototype program out of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) looking to develop a scalable family of Electronic Warfare (EW), radar and communications capability to support multiple classes of ships and other Navy platforms, according to an ONR statement. InTop will use a modular/open radio frequency (RF) design to facilitate best-of-breed technology and cost effective upgrades.
ONR’s vision for InTop is to:
- Dominate the RF spectrum;
- Enable innovation through a RF Open Architecture (hardware and software); and
- Create affordable systems that are scalable across platforms.
According to ONR, “InTop plans to reduce the number of topside apertures present on Navy ships through the use of integrated, multi-function, multi-beam arrays. In the past, the topside design approach was based on developing separate systems and associated antennas for each individual RF function, which led to a significant increase in topside antennas. This increase has led to problems with Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI), Radar Cross Section (RCS) and the overall performance of critical ship EW and communication functions.”
InTop was an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract let at the end 2008 to enable ONR to issue a series of task orders to address different Navy needs, Joe Ottaviano, program director for Lockheed Martin’s Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP), told Defense Daily recently.
“Task order 1 was a series of trade studies. Task order 2 was aimed at submarine technologies. That was something Lockheed Martin won,” he said.
ONR previously awarded Lockheed Martin the technology development phase for a satellite communication prototype called Submarine SATCOM that would be suitable for integration onto boats, Ottaviano said.
InTop task order 3 is really a technology demonstrator trying to put a system together with the latest technology and meet the Navy’s goals and requirements, he added.
“Part of the effort for InTop task order 3 is to hopefully [develop] technology that will be able to transition into the fleet for things like Block 3, which is part of SEWIP,” Ottaviano said.
“How can you do electronic attack, communications in a helicopter and satellite, and how can you do information operations,” he added. “Can you come up with a single suite of antennas and hardware that can do all that capability and be affordable, with simultaneous functionality?”
Ottaviano said the assumption is that ONR will award a contract for task order 3 by the end of the year.
“[The Navy] took an extremely aggressive proposal schedule with the first submittals…their review was quick, and orals were scheduled quickly thereafter,” Dave Beard, business development manager for Lockheed Martin, told Defense Daily during the same interview.
Since winning the InTop block two contract Lockheed Martin hasn’t stopped investing in its effort, Ottaviano said.
“We upgraded that architecture again. It’s a COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) architecture so we have gone through refresh already and snapped in new capabilities to keep pace with the Block 2 architecture,” he said. “We also provided an EA (electronic attack) capability with our own investment dollars. We really continue to move that forward.”
Lockheed Martin also validated its approach with range and chamber testing, demonstrating that the system could meet a lot of the challenges and requirements, Ottaviano said.
“We are continuing to enhance the EA portion of our system, that is a major thrust for us,” he said. “We are also standing up a team to be ready to start executing InTop on day one, so we are continuing to invest in that program even after we submitted the response.”