The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific awarded a $349,393,234 indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity multiple-award contract on May 12 to nine firms for support of unmanned maritime systems. The awardees are Abbott On Call Inc. of Vienna, Virginia; Astrion Group LLC of Huntsville, Alabama; HII Mission Technologies Corp. of McLean, Virginia; ManTech Advanced Systems International Inc. of Herndon, Virginia; Naval Systems Inc. of Lexington Park, Maryland; Peraton Inc. of Herndon, Virginia; Prescient Edge Corp. of McLean, Virginia; Science Applications International Corp. of Reston, Virginia; and Serco Inc. of Herndon, Virginia. Work will be performed primarily in San Diego (90 percent), with the remaining ten percent at various locations outside the continental United States. The ordering period runs from May 12, 2026 through May 13, 2034 — an eight-year vehicle that will span the Navy's most intensive period of unmanned maritime systems acquisition.
The Navy's Unmanned Maritime Systems Portfolio
The Navy is in the midst of a generational shift toward unmanned surface vessels, unmanned undersea vehicles, and associated systems that are designed to extend the reach of manned surface combatants, reduce risk to sailors in contested environments, and provide persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability in areas where manned vessels cannot operate sustainably. The portfolio includes the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel program, the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel, the Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle — exemplified by the Boeing Orca — and a range of smaller undersea systems operated by Navy special warfare and fleet forces. NIWC Pacific serves as the engineering and acquisition technical authority for most of these programs, making the San Diego-based center the center of gravity for unmanned maritime systems support work in the government.
The nine-firm IDIQ provides NIWC Pacific with a flexible pool of contractors to draw on as the unmanned systems portfolio matures from experimental platforms to program-of-record systems with defined requirements for operations and maintenance support, software updates, cybersecurity compliance, and human-machine interface engineering. The eight-year ordering period is unusually long and deliberately spans the anticipated transition of several unmanned platforms from developmental to operational status, giving NIWC program managers a stable vehicle that can follow individual programs through their full lifecycle rather than requiring recompetes as requirements evolve.
The Nine-Firm Pool and What It Signals About Competition
The breadth of the awardee pool — nine firms across a wide range of sizes and specialty areas — reflects NIWC Pacific's strategy of maintaining a diverse contractor base for a portfolio whose requirements are still being defined by operational experience. Abbott On Call and Naval Systems Inc. are smaller firms that bring specialized technical expertise in maritime systems and potentially more agile response capability for smaller task orders. The larger integrators — HII Mission Technologies, ManTech, Peraton, and SAIC — bring the program management depth and cleared workforce necessary for more complex, multi-domain task orders that span software, systems integration, and cybersecurity. Prescient Edge and Astrion Group represent mid-tier firms with deep technical roots in specific mission areas. Serco's inclusion continues the British-owned firm's pattern of winning Navy technical support vehicles where its shipbuilding and naval systems heritage gives it credibility in maritime engineering evaluations.
Task orders under the IDIQ will be competed among the nine pool members, with the ordering pattern likely to follow NIWC Pacific's budget cycle and the maturation trajectory of individual unmanned programs. Firms that won pool positions without significant current LUSV or MUSV program experience should expect to build relevant past performance quickly in the early task order competitions, as the Navy's evaluation criteria for larger task orders will increasingly reward demonstrated familiarity with specific unmanned platform architectures.
What It Means for Contractors
Pool members now hold the primary vehicle through which NIWC Pacific will fund unmanned maritime systems support for the next eight years. For firms outside the pool, the window for this specific vehicle has closed, but the unmanned systems market is generating multiple parallel vehicles.
- Pool members should register their UMS IDIQ vehicle credentials in SAM.gov immediately and engage NIWC Pacific's contracting officers to understand the planned task order release schedule for the first year of the vehicle's ordering period.
- Firms outside the pool should monitor NIWC Pacific's contracting forecast for follow-on vehicles and for any open-season on-ramp solicitations; the eight-firm breadth suggests NIWC Pacific is not foreclosing future additions if mission requirements expand.
- Cybersecurity compliance for unmanned maritime platforms operating in contested environments is an area of growing task order requirement; firms with CMMC Level 2 certification and experience securing maritime command-and-control systems should position this capability prominently in task order responses.
- The 10-percent non-CONUS performance requirement reflects that some UMS support work will occur at forward operating locations in the Indo-Pacific; firms with established presence in Guam, Hawaii, or Japan have a structural advantage in competing for task orders covering forward-deployed unmanned system operations.
Cybersecurity, UMAA, and the Indo-Pacific Context
The Indo-Pacific theater is shaping how NIWC Pacific structures its UMS support requirements in ways that go beyond the platform-level engineering work. The Navy's Unmanned Maritime Autonomy Architecture — UMAA — is a framework for managing software and data interfaces between unmanned platforms and their control elements that is explicitly designed to operate in degraded communications environments, a realistic operational assumption in any Indo-Pacific contingency where adversary electronic warfare systems would target satellite uplinks and tactical data links. Support contractors working under the nine-firm IDIQ will need to engage with UMAA interface standards and the associated cybersecurity requirements, which include CMMC Level 2 certification for contractors handling controlled unclassified information in the unmanned system control and communications domain. NSWC Dahlgren and NIWC Pacific have jointly developed the current UMAA baseline; task orders that touch software integration or communications architecture are likely to reference UMAA compliance as a stated performance requirement rather than an optional standard. Pool members should familiarize themselves with the current UMAA baseline documentation available through the Defense Technical Information Center and assess any gaps in their workforce certifications before task order competitions open.
Pool members should also monitor NIWC Pacific's contracting forecast for possible on-ramp periods; the eight-year vehicle structure and the pace of UMS portfolio growth make future on-ramping likely if pool capacity proves insufficient for emerging task order requirements.