WASHINGTON — The Navy awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $1 billion for the systems engineering and software integration of the Integrated Combat System, an overarching effort aimed at synchronizing the technology throughout the surface fleet.
The initial contract awarded on Thursday is valued at $23 million, and if all options are exercised, the work is worth roughly $1.1 billion, according to a Pentagon statement.
“Lockheed Martin is honored to be the U.S. Navy’s future Integrated Combat System provider,” Joe DePietro, vice president and general manager for Multi-Domain Combat Solutions at Lockheed Martin, said in a statement.
“Our 21st century security strategy is delivering capabilities like the Integrated Combat System, a next generation combat management system aligned to the Navy’s objectives to deliver high quality, scalable capability across the surface Navy,” the statement continued. “By leveraging the best of industry, we are creating the environment to quickly develop and field capabilities that will keep the Navy ready for current and future threats.”
The goal of the Navy’s ICS is to modernize the technology found throughout the surface fleet such that the software can be updated over the air, akin to most smartphones, an effort headed by the service’s Maryland-based software factory, the Forge. Simultaneously, the Navy announced last week it is exploring ways to refresh ship hardware rapidly, a new project dubbed the Foundry.
Taken together, the two efforts are meant to create a surface fleet such that a sailor from a cruiser could walk onto a destroyer without additional training.
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In addition to Lockheed, the Navy received one other bid for the systems integration contract. The Pentagon does not routinely disclose the names of contractors who bid and fail to win work.
Lockheed’s win is not necessarily surprising given it was already working with the Forge on ways to rapidly update the Aegis Combat System. However, for the newer effort, the Foundry, the Navy said in its initial notice it anticipates it will work with multiple contractors to rapidly update the fleet’s hardware.
“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 notice. “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.”