Raytheon at SSC

   Ask John Cousins and he'll tell you he thinks the future for unmanned systems is bright. The program manager of the Raytheon Technical Services operation at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center deals with them all the time.

   "The number one thing we do is we work with underwater vehicles," primarily through data collection, said Cousins. It's a field that's growing in importance. He pointed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill as an example. Underwater robotic systems kept an eye on the leak and were used to cap the well.

   Raytheon Technical Services Co. joined the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology (MSET) business community in May 2011. It has 10 people, three of them oceanographers, who provide support in the weather, ocean and climate areas.

   "The unmanned systems industry has a lot of potential for growth in the Gulf Coast region, and we are thrilled to have such a high-quality corporation join the MSET and Stennis family, and it's important having such talented people as John and his team," said Charles Beasley, president and CEO of MSET.

   The SSC operation is part of the 1,500-employee Customized Engineering and Depot Support of Indianapolis, Ind., which in turn is part of the 9,500-employee Raytheon Technical Services of Reston, Va., which provides technical, scientific and professional services and operates on seven continents. It has customers at 440 sites in 80 countries and is involved in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, and trains 2 million people a year.

   Raytheon Technical Services is part of 72,000-employee defense contractor Raytheon of Waltham, Mass., which had net sales in 2010 of $25 billion. Raytheon has been involved in work with unmanned aerial systems for years, said Cousins.

   "One of Raytheon's major capabilities is integrating the sensor and communications systems for unmanned vehicles," said Cousins, who has been at SSC for seven years as an oceanographer. He said ground troops have come to rely on the eyes and ears of such airborne surveillance systems. "We believe that the ocean environment has the exact same potential. Nobody knows exactly what is going on below the surface. We see a huge future market."

   The Naval Oceanographic Office at SSC is a big user of unmanned underwater systems, with a growing fleet of underwater systems that provide crucial maritime data from around the world. Further to the east in Panama City, Fla., the Naval Surface Warfare Center is also involved in robotic underwater systems, primarily in mine-hunting.

   But underwater systems aren't the only robots used by the Navy. The service is currently using Fire Scout unmanned helicopters and will be deploying in the future the Global Hawk-based Broad Area Maritime Surveillance system.

   Cousins said Raytheon has excelled in the UAV sensor market and can provide similar expertise to solving a customer's maritime data collection challenges. It has proven capabilities implementing solutions using networked environmental sensors and communication paths.

   The sensors that are used depend on the customers and their requirements, said Cousins. EPA, for example, is concerned about water quality, where as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management may be concerned about oil leaks. There are also sensors that can detect the amount of oxygen, plankton or hazardous chemicals in the ocean.

   Raytheon integrates the sensors with platforms from a number of manufacturers. Each has its strength and weakness, and Raytheon can put any type of sensor on them, depending on the need of the customer.

   "We take sensors and hook them up to the platform," said Cousins, then the company remains involved in operations and data collection. It can set up the base station and can integrate the system to be used from a laptop.

   For Raytheon, the Seaglider is the primary platform. It's 110 pounds, more than 9 feet long with an endurance of 6 to 9 months and range of more than 3,700 miles. "The data we normally collect are temperature, salinity, depth of water, but we'll collect whatever our customers require," said Cousins.

   But the sensors and the data collection platforms are not limited to underwater vehicles. "We'll also use buoys, depending on customer requirements, and also use surface platforms." - David Tortorano

 

We hope that you found our featured article very informative. If you would like to learn more about the Mississippi Enterprise for Technology, please contact us at (228) 688-3144 or www.mset.org. 

 

 

 Sincerely,

 

 
Charlie Beasley, President and CEO
Mississippi Enterprise for Technology