Lockheed Martin [LMT] is looking to market its Common Radio Room (CRR) to U.S. partner nations, with the first effort to demonstrate the system to the Australian navy, a company official said.
CRR has been adopted by the Navy for use on Seawolf, Virginia, and Ohio-class SSBN and SSGN submarines and CRR is being incorporated onto Los Angeles-class boats, Wendy Underwood, executive director for CRR, told Defense Daily Friday.
“It’s saved the Navy tons of money to get a common approach,” she said. “[The Navy] is projected to save $750 million over the submarine classes.”
Having a common radio room enables sailors to move from one submarine class to the next without having to relearn operating that particular boat’s communications equipment, Underwood noted.
“The whole logistics trail is common, managed out of one program office…[they do] block upgrades,” she said. “Some amazingly powerful things the sub surface Navy has achieved.”
She added the Navy has recently gone through Preliminary Design Review in the last two months for the Los Angeles-class boats to be outfitted with CRR.
Since incorporating CRR onto submarines, Lockheed Martin has taken a variant of the system and installed it on the USS Freedom (LCS-1), she said.
The Navy is now looking at a pilot version of the automated radio room approach for use on DDG-51s, Underwood noted.
“To date, there is no decision on a communications upgrade” to any of the destroyers or cruisers undergoing Aegis modernization work, she added.
In the coming weeks, Brian Nutt, business development for the CRR program, will head to Australia to look at the potential of incorporating the system into that country’s Collins-class submarines.
“We are looking at comms upgrade for the Collins class as well as potentially for their future follow on…the C-1000 program for the submarines that is in the early planning stage,” he said. “We are marketing internationally. It isn’t anywhere yet, but we are trying to change that.”