This week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee followed suit behind their counterparts in the House, placing restrictions on Navy funding for the service’s carrier-based unmanned aircraft program in their version of the fiscal year 2012 defense policy bill.
In a report accompanying the committee’s legislation, panel members recommended a 50 percent restriction on the use of authorized funding for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) system.
That 50 percent restriction is more lenient than the language proposed in the House version of the defense bill. In the lower chamber’s draft of the legislation, Navy officials were restricted to obligating “no more than 15 percent” of authorized UCLASS dollars until the sea service and DoD provide Capitol Hill with information on the requirements development, acquisition strategies and possible alternatives tied to the program.
The Senate committee bill also includes similar mandates on UCLASS requirements development, but goes a step further by requesting Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter to approve a UCLASS acquisition plan through Milestone A, the report states.
On the House side, committee members wanted Carter to certify that the Navy has explored all possible platform options for the UCLASS effort via an analysis of alternatives, and ensure whatever UCLASS acquisition plan is put in place includes a “fair and open competitive strategy” while verifying that strategy is achievable and “presents medium or less risk.”
While the House committee’s funding restriction was intended to push DoD to prove it had exhausted all potential design and development options for UCLASS, the Senate panel’s language is driven by the need to ensure the program is efficient and competitive as possible, according to the report.
Citing language in the FY ’09 defense authorization act, calling for common ground station and sensor technologies, use of open architecture applications along with overall interoperability and standardization requirements for future weapon systems, Senate panel members noted that “to date, the committee can detect very little progress in implementing this guidance” particularly in the UCLASS effort.
While this will hinder initial development and construction of UCLASS and other programs, the effects of that non-compliance will inevitably bleed over into life-cycle management strategies for the aircraft, Senate panel members write.
“In a broader context…[DoD] should be insisting on open systems architecture and obtaining rights to technical data necessary to foster fair and open competition,” according to the report. “Without such access, fair and open competition for follow-on contractor logistics support and maintenance activity is severely limited, if not impossible.”
That said, along with the UCLASS acquisition plan request, members of the Senate committee also want Carter’s office to provide an implementation plan for the language included in the FY ’09 defense authorization act, as well as directives included in the department’s ongoing better buying initiatives, instituted by Carter’s office earlier this year.
The Senate panel’s version of the defense bill, including the UCLASS language, comes days after the Navy awarded four separate research and development deals for the program.
Boeing [BA], General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] were awarded roughly $500,000 apiece to provide a UCLASS conceptual demonstration, according to a Navy release posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website.
“Proposals must have a strong emphasis on an open, adaptive architecture and disciplined systems engineering,” the announcement notes. “The program anticipates leveraging existing, deployed [Defense Department] systems to launch, recover, and control the air vehicle, transfer data in support of time critical strike operations, and conduct [persistent] ISR operations.”
In addition, the UCLASS effort will also lean heavily on the lessons learned from the Navy’s ongoing work with the Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D), specifically in “development and…technology risk reduction” work associated with both next generation unmanned aircraft, Navy officials write.
The UCAS-D, as envisioned by Navy planners, will be an unmanned, carrier-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft with the ability to carry out precision strike operations. Navy officials hope to have either a UCLASS or UCAS-type system deployed with the fleet’s carrier groups by 2018.