For 40 years, Lockheed Martin has supported the U.S. Navy’s submarine
program by bringing integrated solutions to complex systems including
navigation, sonar, and communications. The U.S. Navy recently demonstrated
its trust in Lockheed Martin’s expertise by extending its contract
for Submarine C3I System Engineering & Integration (SE&I) services.
The work entails a major redesign of interfaces critical to the navigation
architectures spanning several Submarine Warfare Federated Tactical
Systems (SWFTS) subsystems across all submarine ship classes. |
“Aligning
innovation with the customer’s strategic plan is a key reason
for our team’s track record of successfully integrating combat
systems on both new construction and in-service submarines,” said
Dave Boyle, Lockheed Martin Business Development Director in antisubmarine
warfare (ASW) and integration programs.
The scope of work includes an unusually significant breadth, scale and
complexity of interface design changes that span across multiple submarine
classes including Virginia Class submarine construction. In its Dec.
14, 2015, contract announcement the U.S. Navy attributed the sole source
justification to Lockheed Martin’s ability to mitigate significant
and untenable program risk in both delivering the interface baselines
and in successfully completing testing in support of SWFTS deliveries
to Virginia Class submarine construction and SSN/SSBN modernizations.
The contract is valued at $60 million.
A “System of Systems”
For 10 years the SWFTS Systems Engineering & Integration (SE&I)
team has performed crucial engineering and management to integrate numerous
submarine combat subsystems – including sonar, imaging, BYG-1
(tactical control and weapons control), and communications—into
one large system-of-systems for all in-service U.S. Navy submarine combat
systems. The team then tests the combat system to make sure that the
subsystems correctly interface with each other prior to installation
on a submarine.
The team leverages its ASW lab in Manassas, which is fully integrated
with three of the major submarine combat systems—sonar, BYG-1
and imaging—and is open to all other SWFTS subsystems, allowing
for risk mitigation of the entire combat system prior to boat delivery. |
