ART ANDERSON ASSOCIATES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N201-004

Description

Due to the United States’ near-peer competitors’ recent and rapid development of precise targeting capabilities within the littoral environments, the Navy and Marine Corps must develop new ways to disrupt enemy activities and succeed at shooting, moving and communicating through this battlespace, as applied to personnel and equipment. The Commandant has identified that the Marine Corps must improve its ability to fight at sea and from the sea, within range of the enemy’s precision fires. This will require the amphibious fleet and littoral maneuver craft to undergo significant development in order to succeed. Smaller vessels capable of operating in a disaggregated manner in both manned and unmanned configurations will help move warfighters and equipment throughout the battlespace, while reducing the risk of having all assets on a few large platforms. The Commandant specifically identifies that “an inexpensive, self-deploying “connector” capable of delivering rolling stock on or near-shore in a contested littoral” is required. He also identifies that the Marine Corps must “seek the affordable and plentiful at the expense of the exquisite and few” when developing and ultimately acquiring these platforms. Art Anderson Associates, along with its team members, will assist the Navy and Marine Corps in developing an autonomous surface vessel that can serve in a multi-role capacity to perform missions supporting this operating environment. There are many missions which a vessel of this type can potentially perform, from delivery of logistical items to delivery of other autonomous air, land, and sea platforms. The primary mission for which Art Anderson Associates is developing a concept for a role-variant, autonomous surface vessel, is one that can launch from “over the horizon”, transit at high speeds, deliver an autonomous land vehicle (the EMAV), and return to the staging ship. Our team has begun the process of optimizing an existing 34’ hull to meet the SHARC design requirements. This vessel is based off an existing and proven hull that is being moderately re-engineered to achieve the mission goals and vessel requirements.  This hull can also be easily adapted for other manned and unmanned mission types. Many parts and systems are off-the-shelf or simply engineered, providing a low cost, low profile, easily built, reliable, and risk-worthy platform. The concept is being proven using state-of-the-art analytical tools to reduce risk early in the design phase to ensure design goals in follow on phases are achieved with relative certainty. The Phase II effort will be specifically focused on predicting vessel motions in the surf zone and using those as inputs to design an autonomous architecture to allow the vessel to transit through this environment consistently, predictably, and reliably.