Blog · Bid Protests

Does a Marketplace Still Answer to Its Solicitation? Two MUSV Lawsuits Will Tell

Chris A. Grable · July 16, 2026

The Navy designed its Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) Marketplace to buy vessels faster than a traditional program could. Two companies removed from it now argue that speed came at the cost of the Navy's own rules.

The cases

Blue Water Autonomy and Saildrone have both sued in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Breaking Defense reported. Each claims that the Navy departed from the terms of the request for proposals it issued in March when it cut them from the competition.

The stakes are large. The reconciliation law enacted last year includes $2.1 billion for MUSVs.

How the Marketplace came about

The Navy canceled its Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) program in March, describing it as more of a prototyping effort and saying enough mature platforms existed to move to production. The MUSV Marketplace replaced it the same month. The solicitation set demanding minimums: carry at least two 40-foot shipping containers and travel 2,500 nautical miles at 25 knots in sea state 4 with a 25-metric-ton load on the payload deck. In June the Navy named seven firms for the at-sea test phase, among them Leidos, Huntington Ingalls Industries and Saronic. Firms that complete testing are to receive $15 million each and qualify for follow-on production.

What each company is asking for

The complaints were filed at the end of June and unsealed in July. Why the Navy found the two offers unacceptable is redacted, and the Navy does not comment on pending litigation. The two companies want different things:

• Blue Water Autonomy says the Navy had already evaluated and selected its solution under MASC before cancellation, and that the company and its investors, including Google Ventures, invested on the strength of the Navy's stated goal of buying commercial innovation. It asks the court to stop the Navy from finishing at-sea testing and committing follow-on production funds until its Liberty design is reevaluated under the RFP and allowed to complete testing.
• Saildrone says its Spectre design met or exceeded every mandatory criterion, held American Bureau of Shipping certification from December 2025 and had long-lead parts on order for fielding in fiscal 2027. It says it learned other firms had been selected from a news story, and that it shared a draft complaint with the Department of Justice in June before filing. It asks only for a lawful reevaluation, not a pause in testing for the other firms.

Update, 31 October 2026: on 29 October the Court of Federal Claims denied the government's motion to dismiss in Blue Water Autonomy's case (No. 26-936), in an opinion addressing jurisdiction and other legal issues; the court said its opinion on the merits will follow (docket entry). The ruling lets the case proceed; it does not decide whether the Navy evaluated correctly.

What the court is really being asked

A new buying model does not escape the solicitation that announces it. When a service writes evaluation terms into an RFP, an offeror eliminated under different terms may have a forum to say so, depending on the instrument, jurisdiction and standing. How the court handles these two cases will show how much room a service has when it labels a competition a marketplace rather than a source selection.

UDC recommends that any company entering a marketplace-style competition read the governing RFP with the same care it would give a conventional source selection, and keep a record of how its offer maps to each stated term. If the outcome is disputed, the solicitation is the yardstick.

The difference in relief matters to everyone else in the Marketplace. A narrow remedy like Saildrone's would add a qualified competitor without slowing the program. An injunction of the kind Blue Water seeks would delay follow-on production for all seven firms still in the test phase. Companies watching for the next marketplace-style buy should note that the two requests illustrate different possible consequences if relief is granted; neither has been granted.