Textron’s Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle played a big part in the Navy’s UISS effort, which makes it more surprising the company did not win the MCM USV production contract. (Photo courtesy of Textron)
WASHINGTON: The Navy has awarded Bollinger Shipyards a contract worth up to $122 million to produce the Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle, a surprising win for the company given the program’s experimentation to date has been largely based on a vessel made by Textron Systems.
The contract, announced Friday through the Defense Department’s daily notifications, is for production, engineering services and other direct costs for the MCM USV, the Navy’s effort to develop an unmanned surface vessel equipped with various payloads to detect and destroy undersea mines.
Bollinger will produce three vessels through the initial contract and the Navy could procure up to “six [craft] in the base year and [has] options for up to 24 additional craft,” according to the Pentagon.
Textron Systems had been working with the Navy for several years to help the service develop the MCM USV through its own unmanned system it dubbed the Common Unmanned Surface Vessel. Its persistent work with the Navy made it the likely candidate to beat in a competition for the production contract.
Neither Textron Systems nor Bollinger Shipyards responded to requests for comment about the contract award as of this report. A third vendor also submitted a bid, according to the Pentagon’s announcement, but it is not clear what company that is because the Defense Department does not routinely disclose the names of vendors that participate in its competitions.
The MCM USV’s importance to the Navy is growing by the day because the larger program of record that the system is housed within, the Unmanned Influence Sweep System, is key to replacing capabilities that will be lost when the service retires its legacy MCM-1 class Mine Countermeasures Ships and MH-53E helicopters.
The Pentagon’s chief weapons tester found significant issues with UISS that were revealed in that office’s annual report, Breaking Defense reported in March.
“The UISS itself and littoral combat ship launch and recovery systems experienced problems throughout the testing, causing system unavailability and degraded mission performance,” according to the report.
Source
Bollinger Shipyards wins big with MCM USV production contract is written by Justin Katz for breakingdefense.com
