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Australian ambassador Dr Kevin Rudd has christened the “Groton” persistent unmanned undersea surveillance vessel at the Sea Air Space Convention in Maryland, USA.
Rudd was joined by US Congressman Joe Courtney, ThayerMahan chairman Mike Connor and Ocius chief executive Dr Robert Dane for the signing, which is expected to support the objectives of AUKUS Pillar II, part of the trilateral security partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
“The Outpost system reflects innovation writ large,” Australian ambassador to the United States Dr Kevin Rudd said.
“It is a deployable, flexible, all-purpose platform powered by wind, solar and wave with multiple applications for civilian and military uses.”
The Groton vessel, CT-based ThayerMahan’s Outpost TM001, delivers scalable wide-area maritime surveillance capability that mitigates a rapidly growing undersea threat.
Outpost, which has been called “the future of our Navy”, augments traditional undersea warfare assets. It can be fielded in a fraction of the construction time, for a fraction of the cost.
Australia’s Ocius Technology Limited, based in Alexandria, manufactures Outpost’s 22-foot hull that is powered by solar, wind and wave energy.
Ocius Technology executive director and chief executive Robert Dane confirmed that the partnership with ThayerMahan represents a blending that will benefit multiple nations.
“Our focus now is to work together to deliver this capability to a number of countries around the world supporting AUKUS, but also other countries,” Dane said, noting the rapidly changing geopolitical environment.
“We have two companies with similar ideologies and an agile ability to deliver and that is what we are all about.”
Outpost is designed to provide an immediate and rapid increase in anti-submarine warfare surveillance capacity, as a force multiplier for the aircraft, ships and submarines traditionally used for the mission, and to path to success for AUKUS Pillar II.
The uncrewed surface vessel carries ThayerMahan’s deep-towed passive acoustic array and processing technology to provide near real-time actionable contact reports from anywhere around the globe.
Robert Dougherty
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