Joanna Crews
Leidos has received a potential three-year, $43.5 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a hull structure for the construction of a second autonomous vessel.
The company will develop the Sea Hunter II-Autonomous Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel Hull Number 2 under the cost-plus-fixed fee contract, the Defense Department said Friday.
Work is expected to be completed by Dec. 13, 2020, with the contract’s base and option periods to run simultaneously.
The Office of Naval Research competitively sourced the contract through a long-range broad agency announcement on a joint science and technology project of the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.
ONR obligated $36.5 million in fiscal 2017 research, development, test and evaluation funds at the time of award.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency christened in April 2016 the first 130-foot Sea Hunter autonomous demonstrator built by a Leidos-led team under the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel program.
Sea Hunter is designed to autonomously perform countermine and submarine tracking operations in the open seas.
