Interview: Dan Keane, Commanding Officer, USCG RDC
United States Coast Guard service is a family legacy for Dan Keane, who today serves as the Commanding Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center in New London, CT."My dad was in the Coast Guard (for nearly 37 years), so this is a way of life for me,” said Keane in explaining that a Coast Guard career “was just something I always knew I wanted to do … it’s a family tradition for me.”The Coast Guard R&D center in New London is “relatively small with just over 80 people here at the RDC” said Keane…
TECH FILE: Acoustic Tech Used to Understand Climate Change in the Arctic
Major changes are occurring in the ocean. Climate change and subsequent melting sea ice are not necessarily good changes. Why are acoustic Doppler current profilers an invaluable tool to get a complete picture of the Arctic’s changing wave conditions in the context of climate change?In the Arctic, the end-of-summer sea ice extent in 2020 was the second-lowest in the last 42 years.“The ice used to melt out in June or July. Now it melts out in May. It used to come back in September or October.
Subsea Defense: Navy Deepens Commitment to Underwater Vehicles
The U.S. Navy uses unmanned and robotic underwater vehicles for a multitude of functions, including environmental sensing, mine hunting, and salvage. The Navy plans to evolve an unmanned systems operating concept that is platform agnostic and capable of operating in highly complex contested environments with minimal operator interaction.The most recent edition of the Navy’s Unmanned Systems (UxS) Roadmap was issued in 2018, and a new version is expected in the near future. The 2018 document states that UxS will operate in every domain…
Standard Missile Shows Versatility with “Juliet” Flight Test
The Navy executed a successful flight test of the surface-to-air Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) at White Sands Missile Range Aug. 14. During flight test “Juliet,” the Navy examined the missile's ability to intercept a subsonic, low- altitude target over land. Juliet is one of 10 follow-on operational test and evaluation (FOT&E) events planned for SM-6's missile performance and demonstration. "This event demonstrated SM-6's ability to detect and engage a slow moving target in the presence of complex land clutter," said Jim Schuh, Anti-Air Warfare Missiles technical director at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, which is among the Navy's SM-6 partners. The SM-6 provides an over-the-horizon engagement capability when launched from an Aegis warship.
What Falls Down Must Come Up Again: DARPA Place Contract
Sparton Corporation has been awarded a Phase 1 contract for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Upward Falling Payload (UFP) program. Sparton, under the UFP program, will design a system intended to live on the sea floor and release payloads. This enablement is thought to represent a game changing capability for mission commanders. The company say it is energized by the opportunity and eager for the collaboration to execute on the delivery system module, in which they will be assisted by the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington to provide additional deep ocean design expertise. “We have enjoyed working and collaborating with Sparton several times over the past few years and we are pleased to be working with them again…
