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38MTRMay 2012What did that entail?MI: The submarines while en route are dependent on oceanography for their tactical advantage, deployment of their sensors, and avoidance in terms of non-detection both acoustically and visually. There are quite a few nuances to that, so that my job really was as a liaison between the naval oceanographic command, the meteor- ological oceanographic centers, and all the other environ- mental organizations. I came in from the combat systems side and from the hardware side. Sounds like you?ve worked on some great projects. MI: The most interesting projects for me are just hap- pening now. Of course I probably say that every year. Whatever I am working on at the moment tends to be the most interesting! Sounds like you find all of your projects interesting. That's not a bad thing.MI: That?s right, in the past I worked with the busy two- system, which is a submarine combat system. Then when the Virginia class hit the water, I started to focus on deployed arrays. Could you explain the Virginia class system? MI:Sure, they are a class of nuclear-powered fast attack submarines designed for a broad spectrum of open-ocean and littoral missions. These deployed arrays are not part of any particular platform. They collect both acoustic and environmental data to help characterize the ocean and to help determine how to take the best tactical advantage, in terms of maneuvering, avoidance and detection. We have looked at many off-board and on-board systems. Taking into consideration how the system puts together the envi- ronmental data with climatological data to come up with the best real-time data that can be provided to the fleet. So that was some of your initial work? MI:Yes, that's how I started out, which was really fun because you get to work with a lot of platforms and oper- ators. We analyzed many exercises and real world events to determine, if we lost tactical control, to determine how. AUVs swim through the surf zone for beach recovery. MTR#4 (34-49):MTR Layouts 4/27/2012 9:43 AM Page 38