Sea Technology

NOV 2016

The industry's recognized authority for design, engineering and application of equipment and services in the global ocean community

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24 st / November 2016 www.sea-technology.com Security at Port Hueneme, California. More than 30 federal and state agencies and organizations participated in the 10- day event. Sea Wasp was demoed in Module Three of the program, where it performed alongside several other under- water ROVs in four scenarios: in a controlled environment, in an open-water environment, on a harbor bottom, and on an offshore oil and gas platform. Module Three was led by the FBI's Counter-IED unit, one of the three agencies cur- rently evaluating Sea Wasp for CTTSO's prototype assess- ment. Saab officials await the formal results of the multiagency testing phase in coming months and continue to scout for new opportunities to get Sea Wasp into the hands of defense and law enforcement organizations for additional testing and demonstrations. So far, the effort is off to a fast start. ST After retiring from the U.S. Navy in September 2011, Capt. Jon Kaufmann took his current position with Saab North America as vice president of Naval Pro- grams. His last active-duty assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, as director of the Secretary's Advisory Panel. Since 2012, Commander Chris Lade, Royal Navy (retired), has served as the defense sales manager for Saab Seaeye's U.K. office. He joined the Royal Navy in 1980, commanding HMS Middleton in 1994 and the Royal Navy Diving School in 2004. He worked on MCM operations during the Iran/Iraq War and the Second Gulf War. what aircraft do in flight. This flying-like maneuverability affords the operator far more precise control of Sea Wasp, which can hover in any attitude within the water column, and allows the operator to place the vehicle much closer to suspected MIEDs for analysis and assessment. Ongoing Testing, Experimentation Working under the Pentagon's CTTSO direction, Saab de- livered three Sea Wasp prototype vehicles in January 2016. That month, CTTSO and representatives from three military and law enforcement agencies—the U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2, the Federal Bureau of Investi- gation's Counter-IED unit, and the state of South Carolina's Counter-Terrorist Operations Maritime Response unit—un- derwent an introductory training session on Sea Wasp at the Charleston Law Enforcement Training Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Conducted by Saab experts from the U.S., Sweden and the United Kingdom, the four-day session gave operators firsthand experience in understanding Sea Wasp's capabilities. The three agencies are now engaged in a 10 to 12 month testing and evaluation phase of the vehicle across a range of missions and operations. In June 2016, Saab was invited to demonstrate Sea Wasp's capabilities at Coastal Trident 2016, a maritime se- curity exercise sponsored by the Department of Homeland "The groundbreaking new ROV incorporates technologies previously developed for land-based EOD robot vehicles."

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