Navy prepares to add new sea drones and vendors to online marketplace
The Navy issued a call for solutions this week as it steams ahead with plans to add new sea drone technologies to the military’s online marketplace and build up its uncrewed systems arsenal.
The solicitation, posted on a government contracting website, is related to onboarding of “Phase II” medium unmanned surface vessels.
Plans for the onboarding effort were laid out in an announcement by the Department of the Navy direct reporting portfolio manager for robotics and autonomous systems.
“MUSV uses modular design principles to create adaptable and resilient solutions that can effectively counter evolving threats. We invite interested parties with expertise in innovative solutions to complex problems, vessel construction, autonomy, perception systems, and general maritime experience to participate in this opportunity. Vendors will be evaluated on platform maturity, open-architecture autonomy compatibility, endurance, payload integration capacity, and rapid-production scalability,” officials wrote. “This open call will allow new entrants to compete and existing vendors to submit updated product blocks and modular payload configurations.”
Although the original announcement mentioned plans for a “forthcoming” issuance of “Area of Interest” documentation, officials wrote in an update on Sept. 23 that the new call for solutions is “in place of” the aforementioned AOI and that a separate AOI “will not be posted.”
Approved platforms will be added to the maritime marketplace hosted on the drones.mil website, which was launched to streamline the acquisition process for unmanned systems.
“This digital clearinghouse will empower authorized acquisition organizations and operational stakeholders across the DoW enterprise to rapidly configure and issue funded delivery orders for qualified Medium USVs,” officials wrote in the call for solutions, using an acronym to refer to the Department of War, the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.
The Navy unveiled its plans for an MUSV marketplace earlier this year as part of a broader shakeup of its approach for buying autonomous watercraft.
Uncrewed and autonomous systems enabled by AI are a key element of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle’s “Hedge Strategy” that he introduced earlier this year. He noted that medium USVs could be deployed for “scouting, screening, and striking.”
The portfolio manager overseeing these types of systems is interested in rapidly onboarding commercial innovations. The Navy plans to use streamlined acquisition pathways in order to “meet the critical operational demand signal for high-volume autonomous vessel procurement over the next decade,” per the announcement.
For the medium USV effort, the service is using a commercial solutions opening.
The platforms must be capable of autonomous operations in open ocean environments and executing multi-day unmanned operations of at least 10 days, according to a list of requirements.
The sea drones must also have the capacity for “at least 2x Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) weighing 24,000 kg each and consuming 25 kW each (all payloads will be containerized),” officials wrote in the call for solutions.
The systems must not have a displacement that exceeds 5,000 metric tonnes or be more than 90 meters in length, among other requirements.
The multi-phase evaluation effort will include an initial capability assessment of vendors’ submittal packages, vessel demonstrations originating from a port in the continental United States, and marketplace qualification and agreement.
“To be considered for this Call for Solutions, the proposed MUSV must be ready for operational demonstration at the time of solution submission. An MUSV requiring substantial modifications for the production platform compared to the as-demonstrated platform will not be considered,” officials wrote.
