Search Results

During a visit to San Diego for the U.S. Pacific Fleet-led Unmanned Integrated Battle Problem 21, Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Lorin Selby said America’s growing focus on autonomous capabilities is showing impressive results.

The Department of the Navy (DoN) is offering more than $10 million in funding opportunities to attract new small business partners and identify technology advances in the areas of autonomy, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, and command and control networks.

In September 2019, EMILY—officially known as the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard—operated in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian. An unmanned surface vehicle, EMILY helped disaster responders deliver medicine and other needed supplies.

In the coming years, the U.S Navy and Marine Corps will encounter new challenges to their operational capabilities. From climate change to adversaries with enhanced technological capabilities, these challenges will require forces that are innovative, agile, and ready to adapt to new realities. How naval forces will confront these challenges will be the topic of a conversation with Chief of Naval Research Rear Admiral Lorin C. Selby, hosted during the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exposition, April 3-5, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored a project at Virginia Tech University nearly 20 years ago that is now growing in influence across the world for measuring aerospace and aeronautical acoustics. Since noise reverberates against solid surfaces, such as the walls of a wind tunnel where acoustical testing takes place, collecting accurate sound data had been nearly impossible at the time. Researchers were also struggling to discern the sound of the wind tunnel’s air flow from the noise of the object traveling through it. After learning about some experiments on Kevlar as a wind screen, William Devenport, an engineering professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Stability Wind Tunnel, said he and a colleague wrote a proposal to then-ONR program officer Ron Joslin to try adding Kevlar to their wind tunnel walls. Devenport submitted the original grant proposal (N00014–04–1–04933) through the FY 2004 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) for alterations to Virginia Tech’s existing Stability Wind Tunnel that would allow it to measure flow-induced noise of relevance to Navy applications.

The proposed topic will explore and exploit the lack of underwater propulsion systems that can efficiently work across a wide variety of speeds over long distances. In particular, this effort is interested in a propulsion system able to transition between low and high speeds, to include the ability to stop and re-start at any time. Other desired characteristics will be briefed at the event. The program will pursue technologies and systems that support development and demonstration of a system that can propel an underwater vehicle in the ways listed. Further mission profile details will be provided at the Industry Day.

Student engineering teams from Princeton, Washington College and the University of Alabama have won first place in their respective events at the “Promoting Electric Propulsion” (PEP) boat races, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE). In just six years, this electric boat-building competition has grown from a single university to 34, with more than 200 students who took part in the five-mile races on Broad Bay in Virginia Beach. Dr. Steve Russell, program officer, Sea Warfare and Weapons department, said he launched the PEP competition with a colleague from ASNE, Dr. Leigh McCue, and Tim Cullis, Naval Sea Warfare Center Carderock, after seeing a public race by local hobbyists in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR), Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane) and the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge recently sponsored a three-stage competition called the Artificial Intelligence for Small Unit Maneuvers (AISUM) Prize Challenge.