Boeing Co.’s Anaheim operation thinks it finally has come up with a robotic submarine the Pentagon will want.
In October, Boeing said it successfully tested an unmanned underwater vehicle that it now is pitching to the Navy.
A contract to build the vehicles would be a boon for Boeing’s maritime division, which has been working to perfect the undersea robot for 10 years.
“The significance of this is huge, it’s really a milestone for us,” said Tom Jones, Boeing’s director of Marine Systems.
Jones didn’t want to guess how much money and jobs a Navy contract could bring.
“That might ruin it,” he said.
For decades, the Navy has wanted an unmanned underwater vehicle,UUV, for short,to locate underwater mines, perform spying and to attack other vessels, Jones said.
The military has embraced automated vehicles as unmanned airplanes play an increasing role in warfare and training.
Other companies such as Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. and Maryland’s Lockheed Martin Corp. have made attempts at perfecting a UUV. But no one has been able to meet the Navy’s contract requirements yet, Jones said.
Boeing hopes to break the streak.
“What happens with the program now is up to the Navy,” Jones said.
Boeing’s UUV has the look of a submarine torpedo, and is launched the same way. It stands about 20 feet tall.
Other defense contractors have been able to build machines that can be launched or successfully perform missions. But there hasn’t been a vehicle that could be easily retrieved from the water by a submarine at sea, according to Boeing.
The company achieved that feat in October, Jones said.
The test was done in the Bahamas by the USS Hartford submarine. Two successful launches and recoveries were made.
“Up into October there were plenty of naysayers, but we did it,” said Jones, who has been with Boeing since out of college 18 years ago.
UUV missions can last up to 60 hours and involve navigating the ocean with complicated programming that relies on algorithms. The vehicle recognizes objects with its forward-looking sonar, Jones said, so it doesn’t have to be controlled remotely.
The next step for Boeing is to refurbish the UUV by spring. After that more testing is set to take place.
About $150 million has been invested into the program since it began 10 years ago.
When the project was in the full swing of development, it had about 100 people working on it, Jones said. Subcontractors Sonatech Inc. in Santa Barbara and New Jersey’s Honeywell International Inc. also contributed, as well as local machine shops that were tapped for work, Jones said.
Much of the work happened at Boeing’s Anaheim campus, which has 18 buildings on 100 acres and employs 3,700 people. It’s also where Boeing builds missile systems and navigation equipment for submarines.
The Anaheim site has been around since the 1950s and has spawned some of the company’s oldest programs.
In the 1960s, Boeing made navigation equipment for the first nuclear powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, which also was the first ship to cross the North Pole.
Boeing is selling its 1 million square feet of industrial and office space in Anaheim and plans to move the bulk of the operation to its Huntington Beach campus with some going to Seal Beach and Long Beach, spokesman Dave Garlick said.
Boeing is the county’s fourth largest employer with 9,860 workers.
