General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GDAIS), which is acting as platform systems engineering agent (PSEA) for the core mission system of the Navy's second littoral combat ship,
the Independence (LCS-2), will play the same role for the fourth LCS, the Coronado (LCS-4).
The Navy awarded a contract in early May for construction of the Coronado to shipbuilder Austal USA at the company's Mobile, Alabama, shipyard. The ship is scheduled for delivery in 2012. GDAIS is teamed with Austal as PSEA on the LCS program. A competing industry team of Lockheed Martin MS2 and Marinette Marine built the Freedom (LCS-1)—a traditional hull-form ship 379-feet long and displacing 3,089 tons fully loaded—and is under contract for the Fort Worth (LCS-3). The General Dynamics-Austal triple-hulled LCS is 417-feet long and displaces 2,794 tons.
The Navy plans to conduct extensive sea trials of both designs and select one in 2010 for construction of a 55-ship class. The ship will be adaptable for mine countermeasures, surface warfare, and undersea warfare through use of removable mission packages.
GDAIS also will provide a scaled-down version of the LCS core-mission system for a new class of joint high-speed vessels (JHSVs), for rapid transport of medium-size loads. The Navy awarded a contract to Austal, as prime contractor, in early November 2008 for detail design and construction of the first JHSV, along with options on nine more ships.
Carlo Zaffanella, director of LCS core-mission integration at GDAIS, says that the system provides a "total ship computing environment" based on a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf)-based architecture that fully complies with the Navy's Open Architecture (OA) mandate for ship combat systems. The GDAIS system, designated Open Computing Infrastructure or "Open CI," supports the Navy's requirement to reduce ship manning dramatically. The LCS is designed for a crew of 40 sailors, with additional personnel to handle the mission systems.
The use of OA-compliant off-the-shelf computing, he says, allows the LCS command center to combine the functions of a traditional bridge, such as navigation and ship control, with those of a combat information center, and could be manned by only three people, giving it the feel of a helicopter cockpit.
Zaffanella notes that LCS is designed for "any display, anywhere" flexibility. The Open CI design permits watchstanders to access navigation, ship control, and combat systems information, as well as data on the ship's power and propulsion plant, from all shipboard workstations.
The company derives its Open CI approach from innovative work by Digital System Resources, a small company that developed "middleware" to support the Navy's acoustic rapid COTS insertion (ARCI) program in the 1990s. That initiative aimed at quickly fielding new computing technology to the Los Angeles-class attack submarine fleet. General Dynamics acquired the company in 2003.
Navy and industry officials have cited the ARCI effort as a starting point for the Navy's OA campaign, which seeks to maximize commonality of computing architectures for ship combat systems.
The use of middleware by the Navy's combat systems developers has proven to be a critical component of OA compliance. It serves to isolate applications software code that controls, for example, sensor and weapon system functions, from the computer hardware the code runs on, permitting modifications to both applications and hardware without affecting the code.
Zaffanella points out that the OA-compliant Open CI design enables the company to scale down the architecture for the less-complex JHSV, providing navigation and ship control or scale up for a more complex ship. The company is discussing a multi-mission combatant design based on Open CI with the Saudi navy.
Chris Montferret, GDAIS director for advanced LCS programs, says that Open Architecture permits significant cost savings for the Navy by enabling GDAIS to act as a smart shopper for LCS components and subsystems. The company has created a data model for its LCS design that is accessible to subcontractors interested in offering products to the Austal-GDAIS team. Those that qualify may demonstrate their products in a laboratory setting and could be invited to participate in the program.
The smart shopper approach will be applied to the JHSV program. A critical design review is set for this summer and a production readiness review for late fall, aiming at a production start in time for the team to deliver the first ship in late 2010.