The contract is for the provision of in-service support of Sonar 2117 until March 2029.
According to a contract notice published by the Ministry of Defence this morning, the Capability Development, Underwater and Electronic Warfare (CD UEW) Project Team, part of the Ministry of Defence, intends to place a new single source contract with BAE Systems service support of Sonar 2117.
According to the notice, the new S2117 came into service in 2022 as an update to the previously outdated S2117 software and is used on various platforms within the Royal Navy.
“BAES are the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) for this system software. It is considered that the award of this contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the UK e-notification service (as required by the relevant legislation) is lawful in accordance Regulation 16 (1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011) for technical reasons.
BAE hold the expertise, technical knowhow and understanding of this specific capability, including a detailed technical understanding of how the key functional parts of the software should interact and knowledge of specific range readings between these key components. For these reasons, it is not considered that another provider could deliver the required level of technical support (e.g., defect resolution, software updates etc) to the software tool in its current design.
A redesign of the current software would be strictly impractical on the grounds it would not meet the timescales required by the Authority and therefore contract obligations could not be met without introducing unacceptable technical risk to MOD capability.”
S2117 is, at its heart, a computer decision aid whose purpose is to provide command guidance on the minimisation of the environmental impacts from use of sonar. The system is even fitted on HMS Glasgow, given Glasgow’s principal mission to hunt hostile submarines – the system provides the crew with an assessment of the risk to marine life caused by operations.
Deep 32, could you give this article more… depth?
Hi mate, it’s basically a environmental impact assessment tool to assist the ship in keeping fish/whales/dolphins safe from own ship sonar transmissions. It’s something that came into being some 15 odd years ago, after it was discovered that many exercises where active sonars were being used excessively, were having a detrimental effect on said wildlife often leading to many deaths. Obviously not a good bit of PR to see lots of dead dolphins washed up on a beach. Basically it takes it’s imputs from the prevailing sea conditions including fish concentrations in Ur vicinity and let’s you know if it’s… Read more »