Huntington Ingalls Industries has acquired the Engineering Solutions Division of The Columbia Group, a leading designer and builder of unmanned underwater vehicles for domestic and international customers.
As a previous stand-alone division within The Columbia Group, ESD is headquartered in Panama City Beach, Fla., and employs about 30 engineers, analysts, craftsmen and technicians. While ESD’s primary customer is the U.S. Navy, the company develops and builds specialized manned and unmanned undersea vehicles for military customers around the world. It has built or converted specialized craft for a variety of purposes, including support of submersibles and submarines, special warfare, testing of mine warfare systems, torpedo countermeasures and more.
ESD will operate as Undersea Solutions Group, a subsidiary of HII, and will report to Newport News Shipbuilding’s Submarine and Fleet Support division.
Ross Lindman, ESD senior vice president, said:
As the Navy moves toward greater employment of unmanned vehicles in both the surface and undersea domains, it makes great strategic sense to bring together a builder of unmanned undersea vehicles and one of the world’s great builders of naval ships and submarines.
Image: HII