The Navy issued a notice on Jan. 31 announcing a three-day long industry day focused on opportunities in unmanned surface and undersea vessels (USVs and UUVs, respectively), in accordance with the latest defense authorization bill.
The fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires each service to perform private sector industry outreach in key advanced system development areas every 180 days starting by March 1, 2023.
The legislation defines key advanced system development areas for the Navy as USVs, UUVs, unmanned deployable mobile ocean systems, unmanned deployable fixed ocean systems and autonomous unmanned aircraft systems.
In this notice, the Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC) invites existing and new industry partners to learn about future opportunities during a hybrid virtual and in-person Washington, D.C., industry day event from March 1 -3.
The service said it expects briefs will cover “strategic overviews, program initiatives, avenues of entry, upcoming opportunities, and other topics relevant to the direction and partnership opportunities with the PEO USC and beyond.”
Industry days like this are already part of the culture of the Unmanned Maritime Systems (PMS-406) program office, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, Program Executive Officer For Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO-USC), told reporters Monday during the American Society of Naval Engineers’ Technology, Systems and Ships Symposium.
“It is definitely part of their culture as it is for most of my other program offices. What we’re going to do this time is a broader one, we’re going to try and basically give a pretty wide breadth on all of our unmanned programs and autonomy in about a month,” Moton said.
He confirmed while this was partially driven by the provision in the NDAA the service was already conducting industry days.
“As I looked at the language, I think Congress was making a completely fair statement that there’s just lots going on in unmanned across the services and once every six months, get as many industry as we can in the room, talk to them about where things are, where everything is in the acquisition process, I think it’s a great idea. So we’re going to embrace it in about a month,” Moton said.
The Navy said it expects to release a detailed schedule of government participants closer to the event, but briefers are expected to include the PEO USC, the Program Executive Offices for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons (PEO U&W), the Unmanned Task Force, the Marine Corps Systems Command, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).
![Graphic model of the HII Mission Technologies' REMUS 620 medium-class unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV). (Image: HII]](https://www.defensedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/hii-remus-620-scaled-e1667585913538.jpg)
Responses are due by Feb. 28.
The FY ‘23 NDAA said these industry days help collaborate with the private sector on current and future opportunities, raise awareness on the development areas, capability needs and potential requirements related to the development areas and raise awareness within the military of potential industry solutions to these areas.
The law specifically directs the service chiefs to identify potentially related military requirements, potential needs or gaps and related experiments or exercises related to these unmanned areas to communicate to industry.
It also directs acquisition executives to identify and describe to participants potentially related acquisition plans and strategies, and possible opportunities for industry at the industry days.