Northrop Grumman Maritime Systems Corporation this spring won an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract potentially valued at $88 million for new components, support service, and obsolescence management for integrated bridge systems (IBS) on surface ships.
The award, encompassing work through 2019, is a follow-on to a five-year contract now in place for IBS work. Currently, the company is building systems for LPD-27, the last of the 11-ship San Antonio–class amphibious-assault ships, for the littoral combat ship LCS-11, and for the Coast Guard’s fifth national security cutter, the James (WMSL-754), now under construction at Huntington Ingalls’ Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard.
Northrop Grumman Maritime Systems also is completing a system for the Arleigh Burke–class destroyer modernization program and just finished an IBS upgrade for the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy (WAGB-20), including integrating nine new computers and Coast Guard–specific software. The company also will upgrade the bridge systems for the Navy’s 13 Cyclone-class patrol ships.
Maritime Systems has delivered one IBS to the Royal Australian Navy and several to the Mexican navy. Since 2000 it also has had an in-service support contract for navigation work for the Royal Canadian Navy.
The company, formerly Sperry Marine (now the company’s commercial unit), has built the IBS since the mid-1990s, when the Navy embarked on its “Smart Ship” program, an initiative aimed at inserting advanced ship machinery and other systems to achieve dramatic efficiencies in crew workload and thereby reduce ship-manning requirements.
Smart Ship, which started with the Aegis cruiser Ticonderoga (CG-47), eventually evolved into a series of modernization efforts. Over the years, more than 200 IBS have been delivered and are in service on board surface combatants, amphibious-assault ships, carriers, Military Sealift Command ships, and Coast Guard cutters.
Jeff Holloway, Maritime Systems campus manager at the company’s Charlottesville, Virginia, facility where the IBS voyage-management system (VMS) software is written and tested, said that “the real advantage of the system is situation awareness.” VMS accomplishes that by keeping bridge watchstanders aware through automated sensor inputs of navigation, speed, water depth, and other position data.
“Traditionally, the bridge watchstander had to calculate position and navigation data manually—the system allows the watchstander more opportunity to focus on the tactical situation.”
The IBS takes navigation inputs from ship sensors, including the ship’s navigation radar, speed log, and depth detector, as well as inertial navigation systems and GPS. Radar data—including coastline, contacts with other ships, channel buoys, and obstacles—can be overlaid on the electronic chart-display information system-Navy (ECDIS-N), “painting” the navigation picture on the chart.
“The system provides redundancy—depending on the number of display nodes, the integrated picture can be displayed at multiple stations,” Holloway said.
He added that when a ship is in restricted waters, the pilot can calculate lines of position that, integrated with radar data, provide the ship’s exact position. The IBS also integrates weather data and data from an automated information system that identifies other ships and contacts in the area. For example, if the system detects a tanker, it can provide not only the tanker’s name but her registration.
The VMS software, running on IBS processors, is integrated with the navigation systems in a wide range of configurations for the various ship classes that use IBS. The IBS hardware includes flat-panel displays and processors stowed in equipment racks.
Holloway said the hardware initially was located just beneath the bridge, but for newer ships the hardware racks are located in other ship spaces and networked to the bridge displays.
The company purchases the computers and displays from commercial vendors and modifies them for the bridge configuration and sensor suite of the ships they will go aboard at the Charlottesville plant.
The company expects to complete three more Burke IBS systems by year’s end and to start on five more, on a contract option, late this year or early next year, both for forward-fit and backfit for the Burke modernization effort. It also is supporting the ongoing cruiser-modernization program.