Page 25: of Marine Technology Magazine (January 2024)

“The sky’s the limit in terms of payloads that can be brought into the vehicle.”

Ann Stevens, Vice President,

Boeing Maritime & Intelligence Systems subsea vehicles, speci? cally vehicles with increased endurance nautical miles. “You can go for months at a time without requir- to allow them to be deployed and held in position until needed. ing a host ship or any sort of sustaining operation at sea,” said “We listened to that and we put ourselves into that customer Stevens. Designing, building and delivering advanced UUVs is space to invent something that has persistence, that doesn’t re- one thing; ensuring that the platform is resilient from technol- quire a host vessel to deploy, recover, or sustain for long periods ogy obsolescence is another. In this regard, Stevens said “this of time, and that has big payload capacity,” said Stevens. platform is particularly open in that you can deliver it with a

So Boeing started developing what it called Echo Voyager, the payload or not. If we just take payload capability alone, there’s ? rst XLUUV class of vehicle, back in 2012-2013, putting it to an ICD (Interface Control Document) that anyone can develop sea in 2016-2017. “It spent 10,000 hours at sea, and continued to, both software and hardware. What we provide is the vehicle on through the Navy’s acquisition of the Orca vehicle,” said and some hardware dimensions to interface into. Anybody can

Stevens. When asked to de? ne the outstanding characteristics bring a payload carriage, it doesn’t have to be developed or ven- of Orca, Stevens starts with the payload section. “You’ve got dor locked in, and then software as well. So we just say the 34 by 8.5 by 8.5 feet; you could actually ? t four LDUUVs in payload design itself has to provide some neutral buoyancy and the payload section of an XLUUV. So that’s really a big differ- it has to ? t within a certain power requirement. Otherwise the entiator right there.” The other differentiator is range. The die- sky’s the limit in terms of payloads that can be brought into the sel-electric powered Orca has a total endurance of around 6500 vehicle.” www.marinetechnologynews.com 25

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