Naval maritime technologies highlighted at ANTX 2017
NewsAugust 17, 2017
PANAMA CITY, Florida and NEWPORT, R.I. Naval Sea Systems Command's Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) conducted Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) 2017 on August 15 and 16 concurrently at naval locations in Florida and Rhode Island.
Naval officials say that ANTX is a collaborative event where technologists, stakeholders, and warfighters can exercise and test out innovations and prototypes at the research and development level before integrating at the operational level.
One of the entrants was shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (Newport News, Virginia), which demonstrated its Proteus dual-mode unmanned undersea vehicle in several successful autonomous contested battlespace test missions during the event. In the showcase, Proteus -- developed by HII’s Technical Solutions division (Undersea Solutions Group) and technology firm Battelle -- entered a contested battlespace to deliver and launch three smaller unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs). In the test-battle scenario, Proteus went against micro-UUVs from Riptide Autonomous Solutions and Northrop Grumman’s REMUS UUV, which for their part successfully executed mission plans according to their onboard sensors and payloads to investigate and prepare the contested battlespace.
Another entrant at ANTX was Leidos (Reston, Virginia), which brought its Leidos Pathfinder vessel and its high-resolution sensors to traverse the waters off of Panama City, Florida, in autonomous mode. The ship surveyed the sea floor and instantaneously transmitted ocean and meteorological data back to shore at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport, R.I. and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Panama City. Pathfinder also conducted a completely autonomous launch and recovery of UUV to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating the surface ship survey capability with the ability to perform high-resolution follow-up of features of interest.
