Lockheed Martin Australia awards more submarine combat system R&D contracts to Australian industry
Lockheed Martin Australia has awarded eight contracts worth a combined $600,000 to Australian industry and academic organisations to author White Papers on the development of novel and emerging advanced technologies in support of Australia’s ATTACK Class Submarine combat system.
This is the second cycle of R&D, which is funded by the Commonwealth under the Future Submarine Combat System Integrator Program and administered under the Lockheed Martin Australia contract. Each 9-month R&D Cycle consists of proposals from industry and academia against a set of published R&D topics. After a competitive review and assessment of proposal responses, down-selected responses are awarded a contract to fund further development of a White Paper. Upon completion of the White Papers, further contracts may be awarded to selected respondents for Ongoing Capability Research.
The company says the combat system R&D Program features a continuous process to build ongoing Australian combat system R&D capabilities that have been scaled to meet the long-term needs and developing future capability and technology for the Australian Submarine Force. The program includes a defined approach for transition of successful R&D outcomes into the evolving Attack class combat system baseline configurations. To date, two R&D cycles are currently underway with a third cycle commencing in June.
The first cycle of R&D contracts in March 2019 saw more than $900,000 allocated to industry and academic institutions for White Paper development. These Cycle 1 White Papers are currently being assessed for suitability for the competitive award of contracts for longer term Ongoing Capability Research.
A total of 54 responses were received for the R&D Cycle 2 topics, and this reflected a 20% increase in responses over Cycle 1. Requests for the following topics under Cycle 2 projects were sought and the organisations that have been successful for the award of contracts of $75,000 each are shown against each topic:
- Novel methods for reliable communications on an unstable platform – Contract awarded to Innovations for Humanity Pty Ltd from NSW
- Emerging technologies for improved autonomous celestial navigation – Contract awarded to University of Adelaide
- Novel methods to integrate compressive sensing techniques – Contract awarded to University of South Australia
- Novel methods to monitor, track and efficiently manage power within racks – Contract awarded to University of Melbourne
- Use of advanced materials and fabrication processes to overcome Space, Weight, Power and Cooling constraints – Contract awarded to Airspeed Pty Ltd located in South Australia.
- Investigation into real-time monitoring of human performance – Contract awarded to University of South Australia
- Smart driven dynamic reallocation of computing resources based on compute demands – Two contracts were awarded under this topic to University of Tasmania and IPACS Australia Pty Ltd located in South Australia
No contracts were awarded under one further topic, Distributed underwater sensor networks and their impact on submarine operations.