Duane Fotheringham, president of Mission Technologies’ Uncrewed Systems group, was featured on a recent episode of the CavasShips Podcast.
After highlighting Mission Technologies’ portfolio of unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vessels, Fotheringham noted: “We’ve been building these platforms for 23 years. Over that time, we’ve delivered nearly 700 vehicles to customers around the world in 30 different countries. … One of the things that we’re really proud of on those vehicles is that out of that 700 vehicles that we’ve been delivering since 2001, around 90% of those vehicles are still operational and out in the field. … It’s the reliability and longevity of those platforms that has really made them successful.”
Asked about areas for growth, Fotheringham said “the biggest areas that we’re working on” are scalability and modularity.
“How do we make each piece separate?” he said. “How do we make them easy to integrate new sensors and new payloads into? Most of the time we’re working with a customer that has a problem to solve, so they’re coming to the table with a sensor or an idea of a way they’ve solved this in the past. So we look at how we can integrate those pieces in, and then we want the vehicles to run longer … so that’s looking at both the efficiency of the vehicle and battery technology.”
Listen to the podcast at defaeroreport.com.
