Leidos wins $358M Navy unmanned vehicle contract

Leidos has won a potential 10-year, $358.5 million to help the Navy design and build a medium-size unmanned undersea vehicle for carrying out data collection missions and deploying mine countermeasures.

Four companies submitted proposals for the contract that includes one initial base year and up to nine individual option years, the Pentagon said in its Thursday awards digest.

This award of the Medium Unmanned Underwater Vehicle program has been approximately two years in the making since the Navy put out its solicitation that outlined its desire for two configurations of the platform.

For the notional MUUV variant, the Navy sought submarine-based autonomous oceanographic sensing and data collection features in support of intelligence preparation of the operational environment.

Configuration number two is envisioned as being able to deploy surface-launched and -recovered mine countermeasures after it launches from Navy and Marine Corps surface vessels.

Leidos has both sought and made inroads into more unmanned platform design work for the Navy over the past several years, including through its acquisition of Gibbs & Cox in Spring 2021 and the Sea Hunter project to build an autonomous vessel for the Navy.

The company pursued the Navy's Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle prototyping contract won by L3Harris Technologies, but used that as a learning experience and views Gibbs & Cox as helping apply those lessons.