Future Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) Request for Information

REQUEST DETAILS

This notice is for market research purposes only and does NOT constitute a request for proposal. This notice shall not be construed as a contract, a promise to contract, or as a commitment of any kind by the Government. The Government is NOT seeking or accepting unsolicited proposals.

Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) on behalf of Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC), Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office (PMS 406), issues this Request for Information (RFI) notice. Per FAR 15.201(e), the purpose of this RFI is to improve the Navy’s understanding of industry’s capabilities and other market information pertaining to the production, manufacturing, and fielding of unmanned maritime systems for the Future USV program.

The Future USV program will be an open ocean high endurance, non-exquisite, autonomous vessel. The vessel will be built to commercial standards and will provide the interfaces and payload deck area and support for at least one twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containerized payload weighing at least 15 Metric Tons. Containerized payloads will provide the mission capability of the vessel. This enables the vessel to be outfitted with payloads serving a wide array of mission functions including but not limited to Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting (ISR&T), Information Operations (IO) missions, and serve as an adjunct magazine. This approach results in an affordable unmanned program to address a broad variety of future USV missions.   

Future USV is a high-endurance, affordable asset capable of weeks-long deployments and trans-oceanic transits. The Navy is interested in a vessel that can meet American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) (or equivalent) classification with exceptions for the unmanned nature of the vessel. The vessel will provide autonomous operations supporting embarked payload employment. These autonomous transits may vary in length, weeks or months long, designing the vessel to not require preventative maintenance for these extended underway times.  

The intent of the following questions is to better understand commercial offerings for technology of interest that support the Future USV program. PMS 406 anticipates that respondents may not address all questions.  Respondents may address some or all questions in their RFI response. Tailor your response to address the questions to the best extent possible for your technology of interest.

General Interest Areas

1. Provide a brief description of your company (maximum 100 words).
2. Identify whether your company’s ownership is domestic to the United States or foreign; if foreign, specify the country.
3. If your company is operating under foreign ownership, control, or influence, is your company covered under an approved Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence (FOCI) agreement by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA)?

Existing Design

1. Provide the following:
   1. Vessel Description
      1. Name of product
      2. General description (maximum 100 words)
      3. Beam
      4. Length
      5. Displacement
      6. Estimated range and sustained speed
      7. Hullform description
      8. Propulsion architecture
      9. Vessel drawings and/or renderings
      10. Vessel/design maturity (e.g., Prototype Unit, LRIP, FRP)
      11. Number of vessels produced or in production
      12. Payload capacity for containerized payloads
      13. Manning requirements
   2. Vehicle Autonomous Operations
      1. Navigation
      2. Maneuver autonomy
      3. Situational awareness system and software
      4. Communication systems
      5. On water testing / autonomy maturity
2. Describe the data rights that the Contractor intends to grant the Government for the following:
   1. HM&E Technical Data Package (TDP) (include TDP level)
   2. Machinery control source code
   3. Autonomy

Technology Interest Areas

1. Reliability/Maintenance: Describe the design considerations that contribute to a highly reliable and maintainable system.
2. Automation: Describe the technology that improves/automates refueling, piloting, mooring, anchoring or other manning intensive evolutions.
3. Personnel Safety: Describe the technology that improves the safety and efficiency of embarking/disembarking personnel in higher sea states.
4. Autonomy Maturity: Describe any equipment that currently requires human intervention to operate and does not support autonomous operation.
5. Software Integration: Describe limitations to deliver software for integration into a government-owned/developed software in the loop (SWIL) testing environment. Describe the software capability to operate in a time-dilated environment.
6. System Monitoring: Describe the condition based monitoring strategies/plans to increase the reliability of the system and decrease maintenance time in port.
7. EMI and Environmental: Describe the electromagnetic interference and environmental effects. Describe any proposed alternatives to MIL-STD-461 and MIL-STD-464, and the associated cost savings.
8. Sea State Environment: Describe the technology and the associated technology readiness level that can inform the autonomous control system the sea state environment of the vessel.
9. Physical Security: Describe the strategies/plans to maintain, manage and monitor physical security with limited bandwidth via external communications.
10. Cyber Events: Describe the technology for defensive cyber operations (DCO) with enhanced ML/AI capabilities that will aid in preventing, mitigating, recover from, and adapting to cyber events within a local area network of multiple enclaves with the ability to communicate messages off-hull in a bandwidth constrained environment to an ashore and/or afloat Security Operations Center.
11. Data-at-Rest: Describe the technology for data-at-rest that can protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and secret collateral national security information using National Security Agency (NSA)-approved commercial national security algorithms (CNSA), supports RAID 0, 5, and 6, and crypto ignition key (CIK)-less enabled.
12. Autonomous Cyber Defense: Describe the technology to support an autonomous boundary defense solution capable of operating in a denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) environment. Does the technology comply with the cybersecurity requirements of Prevent, Mitigate, Recover, and Adapt to Cyber events/incidents as outlined in the Joint Chief's Cyber Survivability Endorsement Implementation Guide?
13. Maintenance and repair: Describe the current and future state for mean downtime (MDT). What is the strategy/plan, if any, to reduce maintenance and repair time in the future state?
14. Reliability: Describe the current and future state for equipment reliability. What is the strategy/plan, if any, to improve equipment reliability in the future state?
15. Sensor Perception: Describe the sensors, including radars, cameras, and other speed/acoustic/weather/etc. sensors needed to ensure the vessel is able to autonomously sense, classify and avoid targets in order to navigate safely in blue water IAW the 72 COLREGS. 
16. Other Technology Areas: Address any other technologies or capabilities that are relevant and important to the design and production of your vessel.

Production Interest Areas

1. What are the expected design and production timelines?
   1. Contract award (Detail Design) to Start Construction.
   2. Start construction to Lay Keel.
   3. Lay Keel to Delivery.
2. Given your current shipyard capacity with current backlog, provide a ROM estimate and lead time to manufacture and deliver quantities of 1, 5, 10, and 20 units.  
   1. What is the maximum throughput per year?
   2. Describe your current work force capability, capacity, and hiring plan, if required, to support your capacity goal.
   3. Describe any production risks
   4. Describe the cost efficiencies of labor and material at different quantities
   5. If a large block buy of vessels occurred, describe your ability to scale production facilities and workforce.
3. What supply chain risk mitigation/management performance initiatives does the company have in place to avoid manufacturing delays, to include but not limited to:
   1. Mitigate parts nonconformance and obsolescence.
   2. Maintain qualified Shipbuilder trades, Original Equipment Manufacturers, and vendors.
4. Identify first tier suppliers for major components or subcomponents of your vessel design or vessel. Major components and subcomponents include but are not limited to hull, propulsion, and communication systems.
   1. Are any suppliers under foreign ownership, control, or influence? If yes, specify the supplier, major component or subcomponent, and country.
   2. Have you assessed any suppliers that are single source, capacity constrained, foreign dependent, and/or facing near-term Diminishing Manufacturing Sources & Material Shortages (DMSMS)? If yes, please identify the supplier and the associated major component and/or subcomponent.
   3. Identify the major components and/or subcomponents that are long lead-time items. What is the amount of time it takes to procure each item?
   4. What are the capacity limitations of the supply chain?
5. Identify past experience with American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) (or equivalent) class notation and certification, and provide the specific rulesets utilized in past ship production.
6. Provide producibility methods/processes/techniques that allow an expedited or efficient production approach.
7. Provide any commercial processes for manufacturing that you intend to apply to production of your vessel.

Investment

1. Identify the types of facility and capital investments that your company is planning for the next eighteen (18) months. What is the impact of these investments on the production activities (e.g., quality assurance) and production throughput and capacity?
2. Does the company have established relationships with sources of capital for investments in facilities and/or equipment? 
3. Describe the company’s initiatives to pursue additional capital to mature designs or prototypes, or scale production.

ANSWERING THIS NOTICE:

Each respondent is limited to a single submission of a questionnaire in accordance with this RFI. Questionnaire submissions shall be in Microsoft Word in no less than 1-inch margins and 12-point Times New Roman font.

Respondents should provide a company profile to include, at a minimum, the following:

• Business name
• UEI/ Cage Code
• business address
• business website
• business size status (i.e., SB, VOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone SB, SDB, WOSB, LB)
• number of employees
• employee classification level
• facility classification level
• point of contact name
• mailing address (if different from business address)
• phone number
• email address

E-mail responses are preferred, but if your submission contains large files or information that is proprietary in nature to send, you may provide your submission using DoD SAFE (https://safe.apps.mil/). In order to obtain a link for DoD SAFE submission, the respondent must e-mail a request to the Contract Specialist and Contracting Officer no later than three business days prior to the response deadline. The Respondent shall provide their name and e-mail as contact information so the Government can generate a pick-up request from the DoD SAFE application to be sent to the Respondent, which is valid for 14 calendar days. Respondents shall address their DoD SAFE Subject Line: “RFI Response to Future Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) Request for Information - Questions [COMPANY NAME]”. Respondents shall click the “Confirm Delivery” button within the DoD SAFE app to receive a confirmation of pick up by the Government. The DoD SAFE system records submission times. Respondents are responsible for generating a drop-off time no later than 3 days prior to the submission date and time to ensure timely drop-off for their submission. The Government will not provide acknowledgment of responses received.

Proprietary information, if any, must be clearly marked. To aid the Government in its review and evaluation, please segregate proprietary information. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned. Respondents that include in their submissions data that they do not want disclosed to the public for any purpose, or used by the Government except for evaluation purposes, shall --

1. Mark the title page with the following legend: “This response includes data that shall not be disclosed outside the Government and shall not be duplicated, used, or disclosed -- in whole or in part -- for any purpose other than to evaluate this White Paper. The data subject to this restriction are contained in sheets [insert numbers or other identification of sheets]”; and
2. Mark each sheet of data it wishes to restrict with the following legend: “Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this submission.”

The response deadline is 12:00 pm EDT on June 25, 2025.  All responses must be sent via electronic mail to POCs listed below.

Responses SHALL NOT be faxed or hand delivered.  NO CLASSIFIED MATERIAL SHALL BE SUBMITTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

This notice is not a request for proposals and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation.  This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response.  Sources choosing to respond to this notice are wholly responsible for any costs/expenses associated with submitting a response.  Therefore any cost associated with the market survey submission is solely at the interested vendor's expense.  The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate.  Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization's qualifications to perform the work.  Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted.  Respondents will not be notified of the results of this notice.  The information obtained from submitted responses may be used in development of an acquisition strategy and a future solicitation.  Submissions will not be returned. 

DISCLAIMER AND IMPORTANT NOTES:

Respondents are advised that Booz Allen Hamilton may assist the Government in its review of responses received under this notice.  Respondents shall provide notification on its cover page if the respondent does not consent to the use of the aforementioned contractors. Unless otherwise stated by the respondent, a submission received to this notice constitutes consent that the abovementioned contractors can have access to all information provided in the respondent's submission.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The U.S. Navy has set up a bidder’s library for the Modular Attack Surface Craft program to ensure collaboration and sharing of documentation between the Navy and Industry.

To request access to this website, please complete the attached Terms of Use and send that document in an email to contact@example.gov, the subject line shall state: “Bidders Library Access Request [COMPANY NAME]”.  The MASC bidder’s library will be maintained at a distribution A level.