The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser Monterey (CG-61) was the subject of early testing for the Forge, the software factory and sister program of the Foundry. (U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Chelsy Alamina)
WASHINGTON — The Navy next month will host industry vendors capable of providing shipboard computing hardware in preparation for a new initiative, dubbed “the Foundry,” intended to be a sister program to the service’s Maryland-based software factory, the Forge.
The industry day will take place on Oct. 25 and 26 and will be hosted by the program executive office for integrated warfare systems, according to a public Navy notice published last week.
“Within the Foundry, the Navy’s computing infrastructure development and fielding processes shall keep pace with current technologies without any sacrifice to schedule or total ownership costs,” according to a separate but related public notice about the new project. The program “will support deployment to an array of ships and sites (e.g., large and small combatants, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, and other related programs, including U.S. Coast Guard, foreign military sales, and other proposed future ship classes).”
The service described the Foundry as responsible for providing the surface fleet with the shipboard computing hardware necessary to create its envisioned “Integrated Combat System.” ICS is the phrase coined by the Navy to describe the lofty goal of a uniform fighting environment aboard every warship in the surface fleet, allowing a sailor aboard a cruiser to step onto destroyer without any additional training.
“To take advantage of the DevSecOps benefits envisioned by the Forge, the PEO IWS X hardware team established ‘the Foundry’ as the mechanism to enable continuous innovation and agility into the delivery and maintenance processes of the shipboard hardware,” according to the notice.
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In its request for information, the PEO lays out four areas it is seeking industry assistance: operations, control, design and production. Within those areas, the RFI poses a series of broader questions on each category spanning subjects from acquisition approaches and software version tracking to product support as well as integration and testing requirements.
The Navy also says that it will likely work with multiple vendors to ultimately deliver on the Foundry’s premise.
“The government does not expect or desire a single vendor to fulfill the entirety of the scope of these four elements. Companies may choose to respond to one or more areas or subareas,” according to the solicitation. “There will be fact-of-life limitations on some requirements in the [program]. Our goal is to abstract those areas to the maximum extent practicable so that we can collaborate with more companies looking to provide value to the fleet.”
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The capabilities the companies described as part of the ICS are similar to what Pentagon officials have said is needed for Joint All Domain Command and Control.
