MAKAI OCEAN ENGINEERING INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: HR001121S0007-09
MAKAI OCEAN ENGINEERING INC — SBIR Phase II award from Department of Defense.
Phase II SBIR prototype / development signal
- Phase II is where Department of Defense funds deeper R&D after feasibility. Incumbents with Phase II history are serious competitors on adjacent topics.
- Use this award as past-performance context and to map customer organizations for STRATFI/TACFI-style transition planning.
- At $1,684,320, this is a large obligation for typical SBIR Phase sizing — worth reviewing for scope breadth and teaming opportunity.
- Topic code HR001121S0007-09 links this award to a solicitation family — search the same topic stem for incumbents and recompete timing.
- Amount
- $1,684,320
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase II
- Topic
- HR001121S0007-09
- Solicitation
- HR001121S0007.I
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- HI
- Period
- 2022-09-30 → 2024-03-31
Description
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) uses a number of acoustic systems required for communication and sensing applications subsea. In order to most effectively use these acoustic systems, there must be a good understanding of the sound speed throughout the water column. The water temperature and salinity profiles vs. depth are the critical factors that influence the speed of sound in a body of water. Sound speed is highly variable in the upper part of the water column, where seawater temperature and—in the Arctic, especially—salinity can be both highly variable and dynamic in time and geographic location. Having an accurate real-time means of measuring the seawater temperature, and thus the sound speed in this upper part of the water column provides critical information to improve vulnerability assessments of subsea platforms, and the effectiveness of surveillance systems. Moreover, high-resolution, in-situ seawater temperature and sound velocity profiles collected over time in areas of interest enable improved accuracy of Naval Oceanographic predictive models, and benefits down-stream operations such as the Sonar Tactical Decision Aide (STDA) which are critical to maintaining acoustic superiority. To address this critical gap the Makai team is developing the ExREI (Extended Range Environmental Interrogator), a robust, deployable, multi-use sensor that measures key environmental properties that are processed in combination with a host platform’s hotel sensors to generate accurate and timely sound speed profiles in real-time.