New Alliance to Compete for DD21

Sun Microsystems is joining the Gold Team that is competing for the design of the US Navy's next generation of destroyers, the 21st Century Land Attack Destroyer, the DD-21. Sun will take part in the engineering effort to design, build and support the total ship computing architecture (TSCA) for the new class.

Two industry teams are competing for DD-21 - the Blue Team, led by Bath Iron Works (BIW) with Lockheed Martin Corp. as the systems integrator, and the Gold Team, led by Ingalls Shipbuilding Inc. (ISI) with Raytheon Systems Co. as the systems integrator. Contractual management for the Blue and Gold teams is administered by the DD 21 Shipbuilder Alliance, a cooperative business unit formed by BIW and ISI.

The DD 21 TSCA is the ship-wide, all-source information processing and management system supporting all operational functions of the ship. It is also the key contributor to network centric warfare, assuring knowledge superiority and the execution of accurate measured force response. In addition, TSCA will contribute to reducing the crew's workload. The core architectural elements in the TSCA will provide an infrastructure that will allow self-healing and adaptability, with high availability of computer resources throughout the network.

More information: Defence Systems Daily