Leidos awarded $72.8M for Navy's TRAPS sub detection system

June 24 (UPI) -- Leidos Inc. was awarded a $72.8 million contract for work on submarine detection sonar for the U.S. Navy, the Defense Department announced.

The company, based in Reston, Va., will perform work on the Transformational Reliable Acoustic Path System, or TRAPS, one of two prototypes developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department agency responsible for the development of emerging technologies military applications.

Leidos' Leidos' work on TRAPS comes under an indefinite quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with a three-year ordering period and no options, the Defense Department announced on Friday.

The TRAPS system uses a fixed sonar mode placed on the ocean floor, exploiting advantages of operating from the seafloor, to achieve large-area surveillance of the area surrounding the submarine. Each node communicates back to a floating "stationary surface node" through a wireless acoustic modem when the ocean floor node detects a sound.

The other prototype, called Submarine Hold at Risk [SHARK], has an unmanned underwater vehicle as a mobile platform to track enemy submarines. Both are part of DARPA's Distributed Agile Submarine Hunting [DASH] program.

Leidos' work on the contract will be done at the company's Long Beach, Miss., facility, with an expected completion date of June 2022.