U.S. Coast Guard cutter Polar Star carved through more than 60 miles of Antarctic ice in the Ross Sea to arrive at the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station on Tuesday. By carving a navigable path through seasonal and multi-year ice, the Polar Star assists in the annual delivery of operating
A class of 12 new nuclear-powered ballistic submarines is ready to enter the detailed design phase after Pentagon’s procurement chief approved the Milestone B review. The Milestone B decision allows the U.S. Navy to appropriate $773 million to defense contractors, in this case it is General Dynamics
A DARPA program that seeks to ensure U.S. forces have connectivity even when traditional tactical networks are knocked offline has completed its initial phase. Named TUNA (short for Tactical Undersea Network Architecture), the program completed the concept phase and now transits to a demonstration o
U.S. Navy shipbuilding projects have become a target of an oversight report released by U.S. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Part of an ongoing series of reports dubbed America’s Most Wasted: Indefensible, the report identified $13 billion in wasteful spending a
The U.S. Navy has awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries a $51 million contract modification for the first year of life-cycle engineering and support services on the U.S. Navy’s San Antonio (LPD 17) class of amphibious transport docks. Services provided in the contract include post-delivery planning
The U.S. Office of Naval Research has recently tested autonomous unmanned swarming boats during a demonstration in the lower Chesapeake Bay. According to the service, the results have revealed ‘dramatic new possibilities’ for autonomy in future naval missions. Using a combination of software, radar
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will live-stream a dive on two Japanese mini submarines sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 75 years later, a team of maritime archaeologists and scientists from NOAA’s office of national marine sanctuaries and office o
Bahrain was the stage for the 39th Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) conference which was held November 30. The conference was a forum to discuss counter-piracy in the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean and the importance of cooperation between naval units in the region, industry and othe
The U.S. Navy’s unmanned aircraft Tern, under development by DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, has made another step towards its goal of performing an initial flight test by 2018. In mid-October, the Tern team completed a critical design review (CDR) of the air vehicle’s General Electric engin
The Defence Research and Development Canada is set to test the TRAPS (Towed Reelable Active Passive Sonar), a variable depth ASW sonar on Royal Canadian Navy ships. The department has contracted GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc. to deliver the systems for testing. According to GeoSpectrum, TRAPS is a to
The U.S. Navy has awarded BAE Systems a five-year contract worth up to $86 million to provide management, engineering, maintenance, and IT support services for the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) at Wallops Island, Virginia. Under the contract, BAE Systems will integrate various mission equipment
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded American defense company Leidos a $8.5 million contract modification to continue supporting the tests of the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. Under the contract, Leidos will deliver i
The U.S. Navy has officially opened a new innovation laboratory, aptly shortened to iLab, with a ribbon cutting ceremony held November 7 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The iLab’s mission will be to exploit and leverage low-cost commercial sector research and tools from the computer gaming indus
The Canadian Navy’s Halifax-class frigate HMCS Montréal is at sea on its first deployment as the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) experimental ship. The modernized frigate deployed October 24, 2016 with a full schedule of missions including combat enhancement training, crew trials and operational testing
