The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, MD, has exercised priced options on two contracts for the Persistent Unmanned Maritime Airborne Surveillance (PUMAS) Capability Broad Agency Announcement (BAA).

The PUMAS BAA is intended to aid development of system level alternatives that can provide optimal unmanned, persistent, maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, while leveraging existing and projected capabilities.

Priced options have been exercised on contracts with Lockheed-Martin Corporation, Saint Paul, MN and Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, Bethpage, NY. During the contract base period, the companies conducted analyses of both manned and unmanned systems capabilities relating to the maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission and derived system architectures for the unmanned systems. For this 7-month option period of performance, the companies will continue with their family of systems approach, developing technical baselines for the unmanned systems and conducting cost, schedule and technical performance risk assessments. The contracted efforts will ultimately help the U.S. Navy apply its manned and unmanned family of systems architecture, within a network-centric environment.

In its effort to recapitalize its manned land-based maritime ISR capabilities, the U.S. Navy believes that UASs will provide substantial additional warfighting capability. “The maritime-littoral environment poses specific challenges for airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance,” explained Capt. Paul Morgan, manager of the Navy’s UAS program office. He continued, “technical baselines for future systems can be best optimized through a family of systems approach considering the integration of manned and unmanned systems into an overarching maritime architecture.”