SAN DIEGO—Defense tech firm Saronic turned a former Amazon warehouse into a schoolhouse, testing facility, and soon-to-be hub for spare parts for unmanned surface vehicles.
A space that essentially used to be a “giant fridge” will soon hold at least 15 of the company’s 24-foot Corsair robot boats on one side and USV parts on the other, as part of Saronic’s West Coast Supply Hub, said Nick Stoner, Saronic’s vice president of growth. And that’s just a quarter of the available space in the 80,000-square foot facility. The additional storage will effectively double the number of boats here.
The boats are shipped in from Saronic’s headquarters in Austin, Texas and, once they’re in San Diego, can be outfitted for “bespoke prototyping” with different payloads, such as sensors or an unmanned aerial system, for customers. They can also be repaired more quickly on site.
“Every time that you put something into the ocean, the ocean gets a vote; something might break,” Stoner said. “If you have a problem with one of the boats out here and you need a changed out part—no different than, you know, a Toyota 4Runner—we’ll have all of those parts here on the West Coast, rather than having to go back to Austin.”
The facility, which opened in October, is primarily used for the operations, maintenance, and sustainment of Saronic’s small USVs. Saronic has about 35 employees based here, but aims to have more than 100 by the end of this year, adding roles in engineering, software, hardware, and mechanical roles.
There’s office space, phone booths, multiple classrooms, storage, and lots of room to expand. Teaching customers how to operate and maintain the autonomous vessels, which can also be remote controlled, is also a key function and focus for the San Diego facility, touching on Navy concerns about integrating USVs into the fleet long term.
Several Corsairs had their hoods popped during a recent tour, but one had the engine block exposed so students could see how to best access the boat’s systems
The goal is to tailor training “so that sailors are basically self-sufficient on the boats,” he said.
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Zumwalts + battleships? Zumwalt-class destroyers could be a good testbed for weapons systems for future battleships, in part, because they have an “amazing capability to generate electricity, which is something we need for lasers. And that would be kind of a match made in heaven,” Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, who leads Naval Surface Forces, told reporters following the WEST conference.
The ship is also designed to be difficult to detect, which could be of interest to battleship designers, he said. “Plus, it’s really big. It’s the biggest thing that we have—aside from an LHA or an LHD,” which are amphibious ships, he said. “I am very, very interested in de-risking battleship by testing and doing more things with Zumwalt.”
The idea is to mimic how the Navy developed the Aegis Weapons Systems by modifying a Spruance-class destroyer hull. “Aegis worked really, really well. And then we were able to take that Aegis Weapon System and put it on a new hull, which is the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer,” he said.
SECNAV has questions about maintenance delays. After nearly a year of pushing shipbuilders to increase production, Navy Secretary John Phelan said he’s focused on ship maintenance backlogs.
“Why are we so far behind? Why can’t we get ships out?” Phelan said during a Q&A following his WEST closing keynote. “I went to [Naval Station] Rota, and those guys crank it out. And I’m like, why aren’t we doing this across the fleet?…This seems to be working.”
The answer: it’s a work in progress.
“The thing that I’m sure impressed SECNAV: the shipyard in Rota is 100 percent delivering on time,” Vice Adm. McLane told reporters. “Fleet commanders love predictability. Like the thing that you hate is the uncertainty of, is it going to be delayed, and if it’s delayed, how long and why isn’t it done yet?”
SURFLANT first incorporated the model Rota uses as a component of Task Group Greyhound, and continues to use it today, McLane said. “We’re close to 100% finishing on time. And the other cool part of it is by reducing the overall length of time of these, [it’s] good for small business. So East Coast Repair was able to get into the ISRA business, took it super seriously and finished on time as well. So from Mayport to Norfolk, those shipyards have been doing that and doing that well for us,” McLane said.
The model is now being used on the West Coast for all destroyers, he said, and amphibious ships will be up next: “Not quite there yet. But super excited about how we can do that and get to better on-time completion [percentages].”
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