Navy to begin key competition for unmanned, autonomy efforts - Breaking Defense

The Navy is poised to begin a competition among industry for a key contract related to its autonomy software development efforts, one that will secure a vital if largely behind-the-scenes role for the winning company in many of the service’s upcoming unmanned vehicle programs, the service told Breaking Defense.

The contract has been dubbed the Autonomy Baseline Manager, and the service’s unmanned systems program office expects to publish a solicitation for the role in the coming months, according to Navy spokesman Alan Baribeau. A five year-contract for the selected company is scheduled to be awarded in summer 2023.

The ABM “serves a central role” in the program office’s “autonomy ecosystem” and will facilitate “activities integral to the unmanned maritime autonomy baseline repository software, processes, tools and procedures,” according to slides about the competition published in July 2021 and obtained by Breaking Defense through a Freedom of Information Act request.

To put it another way, the service is developing a myriad of unmanned vessels and needs to streamline the process of making sure each drone will be capable of working in conjunction with one another. To do this, the unmanned systems office, known internally in the Navy as PMS 406, has been spearheading several projects that collectively aim to unify different software delivered by any given company.