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40MTRMay 2012ting edge technology development. Tell us what you see in terms of advancing technology. MI: Well with AUV technology for example, this is a real- ly exciting time because there is a strong direction for the navy to go to unmanned vehicles for safety, cost reduc- tion, manning reduction and new environments that are being explored. There is a big drive for all military forces to explore what can be done with unmanned vehicles, and for the first time there is a huge buy-in. We are in a tran- sition. This may be a little optimistic, but I think we are in the same transition that computers made in the 60sand now the advances with PCs and tablets you see today. Instead of small, specialized groups with high priced vehi- cles, we are starting to see vendors coming in saying, you know I can build something that doesn't meet everyone's demands, but meets allot of demands both on the com-mercial and military side. I can do it without a million dollar vehicle or a $500,000 vehicle or a $200,000 vehi- cle but I can do this really cheap if all you need to do is this X number of tasks. Even more exciting is the fact that vendors are buying into this concept. If you look at the past the only option was the million-dollar vehicle, because a special sonar needed to be built to fit requiring a high level of initial investment. How has that changed today? MI: If you look at the vehicles today, such as the Iver from OceanServer and others, behind them now are L3 Klein, Imagenex, and Edgetech that are saying, hey there is a market out there for miniature sonar's and we want to be in it. So we have this huge groundswell of vendors includ- ing the sensor makers such as YSI. People that are build- ing the Doppler velocity logs, like Suntech, are all getting onboard with this cooperative spirit. It's been a great part- nership with those vendors in delivering a rapid cycle things like these miniaturized side scan sonar. Klein is a great example with the 3500. The fidelity is amazing; you can see people's footprints where they walked in the mud on the bottom checking out a wreck. For a small vehicle that is unbelievable. The second thing that has happened Concurrent AUV operations from a shallow water launch point in a tidal cut with strong reversing currents. MTR#4 (34-49):MTR Layouts 4/27/2012 9:45 AM Page 40