Joanna Crews
The U.S. Navy plans to award Hydronalix a potential five-year blanket ordering agreement develop a mobile gateway buoy that can support an unmanned underwater vehicle.
A FedBizOpps notice posted Thursday says the company will build a pair of MGB prototypes to the Naval Air Systems Command under the third phase of the service branch’s Small Business Innovation Research program.
Hydronalix will also design a hull structure along with a hybrid electric propulsion system, as well as integrate MK 18 Gateway Buoy communications equipment and controlled Neptune control software into the buoy’s common modular payload bay, according to the notice.
The hull platform will be designed with a hybrid electric/heavy-fuel propulsion system, the Navy added.
Optional deliverables under the agreement include work to integrate a situational awareness sensor, a vertical acoustic communication system, an expendable data exfiltration embedded relay radio and a high-frequency ground wave radio for the buoy.
The SBIR Phase III project seeks a deployable autonomous unmanned vehicle that can perform bathymetric localization and mapping functions simultaneously.
SeaLandAire Technologies and FarCo Technologies also participated in the first two phases of the program.
