Navy Awards Design Contracts for UCLASS Carrier Development

The Navy has awarded four Preliminary Design Review (PDR) contracts for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) air vehicle segment.


UCLASS will be the first deployed carrier-based unmanned air system. It will provide persistent, unmanned, semi-autonomous, carrier-based Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (ISR &T) with precision strike capability to support 24/7 carrier operational coverage.

The four $15 million firm-fixed price contracts were awarded to Boeing Co., General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. The period of performance for the contracting efforts is approximately nine months.


"The PDRs are intended to inform the Navy of technical risk, cost and design maturity of the Air Segment (AS), and allows the industry teams to better understand the program's requirements across the entire UCLASS system to expeditiously deliver the unmanned carrier-based system to the fleet," said Charlie Nava, UCLASS program manager.