LDUUV Document Issued

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center recently issued a draft "top level requirements" document for the Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program.

According to a Federal Business Opportunities notice published last month, the Navy wants to "inform Industry of further definition of program mission priorities and requirements since the LDUUV Industry Information Day was conducted in October 2013."

Industry representatives interested in seeing a copy of the unclassified portions of the TLR need to register on the LDUUV Technical Information Center website.

Don't expect the Navy to respond to any comments on the TLR, though, according to the notice:

The Government is not soliciting, and will not respond to comments or questions on the TLR at this time. The Government plans to solicit industry feedback on the DRAFT Request for Proposal (RFP) and DRAFT System Requirements Document (SRD) when released in mid Fiscal Year 2015. The formal RFP and SRD release are currently planned for the end of Fiscal Year 2015.

The LDUUV program will design, fabricate, and field a new class of large displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs) to provide increased endurance, long range, and payload hosting. The LDUUV will be a modular, open architecture, reconfigurable UUV delivered in increments. The Increment 1 LDUUV will have mission capabilities to include Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (IPOE) and below water Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) to improve battlespace awareness. Future increments are expected to include mission payloads to provide above water ISR, Mine Countermeasures (MCM), and payload deployment. LDUUV Increment 1 will be capable of launch and recovery (L&R) by Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) (Independence and Freedom classes) and submarine (via VIRGINIA-class submarines (SSNs) Virginia Payload Modules (VPM) or Modernized - Dry Deck Shelter (MOD-DDS)). System integration with both platforms is a critical interdependency.