WASHINGTON – U.S. Navy researchers needed a company to develop new sensors for Navy unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). They found their solution from the L3Harris Technologies Ocean Server segment in Fall River, Mass.
Officials of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington announced plans last week to award a contract to L3Harris Ocean Server to improve and upgrade two Iver3 autonomous underwater vehicles.
Navy researchers say they plan to award a contract to L3Harris Ocean Server sole-source for the upgrade because of the company's expertise in developing the existing Iver3 UUV. The value of the upcoming contract has yet to be negotiated.
Iver3 is a commercially developed family of low-cost UUVs for coastal applications such as sensor development, general survey work, sub-surface security, research, and environmental monitoring.
These UUVs are small enough for one person to carry, and feature simple point-and-click mission planning. The unmanned mini-submarine has a variety of sensors and sonar packages for operation in near coastal environments.
L3Harris Ocean Server experts will make several improvements to the Iver3 UUV, including:
-- high-resolution side-scan sonar, acoustic communications, camera, post processing, and shipping case;
-- underwater navigation with position accuracy of 0.3 percent;
-- sound velocity of at least 6 millimeters per second for sound speeds within 1400 and 1600 meters per second;
-- a 500-meter Explorer Pro magnetometer with an 5-meter tow cable;
-- an operator console with a 512-gigabyte solid drive, 8-gigabytes of RAM memory, and integrated GPS; and
-- forward-looking sonar with a range of 200 meters.
The upcoming contract will call for L3Harris Ocean Server to upgrade two Navy-owned Iver3 UUVs to accommodate new sensor payloads for future research programs.
Email questions or concerns to the Navy's Courtney Williams at [email protected]. More information is online at https://beta.sam.gov/opp/630546f802104fc888206a4ffdc2bf8d/view.
