Harris Gets Additional Order for HYDRA Aircraft Carrier Comm System
Apr 28, 2010 08:39 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
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Harris Corp. in Lynchburg, VA received a $9.2 million modification to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract (N65236-07-D-5115) for land mobile radio (LMR) systems and equipment for the Hierarchical Yet Dynamically Reprogrammable Architecture (HYDRA) wireless communications program.
The cumulative value of this contract, including this modification, is $39.2 million.
On April 27/10, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), which manages N65236-07-D-5115, published a pre-solicitation notice indicating that it plans to award a follow-on contract to Harris. Responses to this notice are due by May 4/10.
The Harris HYDRA system provides wireless communication for crews on aircraft carrier flight decks…
According to the SPAWAR pre-solicitation notice, the HYDRA system’s requirements include:
“a) A guaranteed and proven NAVAIR certified system used to support flight deck operations; b) System latency between activation of the push-to-talk key and the receipt of audio at the receiver will be no greater than: 500 milliseconds (ms) unencrypted with a threshold, 800 ms encrypted; c) Multi-level prioritization and ruthless preemption required to support flight deck operations from Priority Fly Control (Air Boss and Mini-Air-Boss) and from Flight Deck Control (Aircraft Handler and Carrier Air Group). A guaranteed working system is required; d) GOTS low-powered systems and radios for HERO (20mw radios are certified to operate up to, but not touching ordinance) and shipboard EMI (including, fire pumps, NFTI, CRTs, combat system/engineering displays, engineering instrumentation, and import non-military interference).”
Harris will perform work on the modification to the original contract in Lynchburg, VA and is expected to complete it by November 2010. This contract was not competitively procured.
