Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has scheduled an industry day next month to overview the service’s Integrated Combat System (ICS) hardware factory program and pipeline called the Foundry.

The notice, issued on Sept. 22, said the late October event will offer attendees a “programmatic overview” of the ICS hardware factor program alongside anticipated requirements in an earlier solicitation for Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems X (PEO IWS X).

The earlier Sept. 5 request for information (RFI)

notice explained PEO IWS X will use The Foundry to deliver IWS and its underlying infrastructure for the surface fleet. 

Fire Controlman Second Class Marcos Reyes, assigned to guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52), stands gun fire control system watch in the ship’s combat information center during bi-lateral exercise Resilient Shield 2021. (Photo: U.S. Navy, by Ens. Emilio Mackie)
Fire Controlman Second Class Marcos Reyes, assigned to guided missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52), stands gun fire control system watch in the ship’s combat information center during bi-lateral exercise Resilient Shield 2021. (Photo: U.S. Navy, by Ens. Emilio Mackie)

“The objective of the Foundry is a continuous computing infrastructure development process that eliminates single sources of supply, continuously validates and qualifies hardware products, maintains and updates an infrastructure catalog, manages an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) software/middleware development process, and produces and sustains fielded systems to ensure the Navy has the most modern and capable combat system computing infrastructure (CI),” the earlier notice said.

The notice also said it aims for the Foundry to help the Navy’s computing infrastructure development and fielding processes to keep pace with current technologies without sacrificing schedules or total costs.

The ICS is planned to be a combat management system of systems that would have a more unified combat environment along every warship. The goal is to make it easier for a sailor to move from one type of ship to another without requiring more training to operate the combat systems.

ICS is programmatically split into ICS software and hardware. 

The Foundry program follows the earlier Forge software factory program that “provides a government furnished virtual and physical ecosystem to foster agile software development using DevSecOps tools and principles.”

The Sept. 5 notice said PEO IWS X established the Foundry to take advantage of the DevSecOps benefits envisioned from the earlier Forge.

The Navy said the Foundry will be “the mechanism to enable continuous innovation and agility into the delivery and maintenance processes of the shipboard hardware. The Foundry focuses on delivering IaaS to accommodate the Combat Systems and Element compute, storage, and networking workloads across all PEO IWS equities.”

The Foundry was established through a flexible contracting structure that uses Other Transaction Authorities to enable industry-government partnerships “to rapidly prototype the continual integration of technology advancements and industry best practices into the Surface Fleet,” the notice said.

The destroyer USS John Finn (DDG-113) launches a Standard Missile-6 during U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem (UxS IBP) 21, on April 25, aided in part by unmanned systems. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Clark Lappert)
The destroyer USS John Finn (DDG-113) launches a Standard Missile-6 during U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problem (UxS IBP) 21, on April 25, aided in part by unmanned systems. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Clark Lappert)

The Navy ultimately expects the Foundry services to help the Forge push software updates to the fleet at “the speed of relevance: rather than only during major ship availabilities that update and install a new hardware baseline.

In the RFI notice, PEO IWS X said the Foundry is focusing on four areas of industry value: operations, control, design and production. 

The notice divided the four areas into questions that touch on company experience developing these tools, experience working with third party vendors and government organizations, experience tracking and managing software licenses across various versions, experience in product support, testing requirements and integration experience.

Notably, the notice said the Navy plans to likely work with multiple vendors in the Foundry program.

“The Government does not expect or desire a single vendor to fulfill the entirety of the scope of these four elements. Companies may choose to respond to one or more areas or subareas,” the RFI said.

Responses to the original Foundry RFI are due by Oct. 2 while the industry days are expected to be on Oct, 25-26.