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An autonomous state-of-the-art maritime sensing system that can be deployed in support of strategic maritime operations.

Outpost provides continuous domain awareness to identify vulnerabilities of strategic assets to potential adversaries. Continuously harvesting wave and solar energy, Outpost tows a very capable acoustic sensor package at the depths required for successful detection and classification. Outpost can operate independently for 90+ days in the harshest ocean environments without any external maintenance. Advanced signal processing enables automatic detection, classification and real-time reporting of maritime targets of interest at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

ThayerMahan has collaborated with industry partners to successfully develop, build and test a low-profile, long-endurance autonomous surface vehicle employing a capable linear acoustic array at depths well below interfering surface noise. Outpost was designed, built, tested and patented in less than seven months. Mounted on a low-observable wave glider platform, Outpost deploys a very capable towed acoustic array capable of operating at deep depth -- allowing for long range acoustic detection of surface and sub-surface contacts.

State-of-the-art communications technology is utilized to power and communicate with the deep sonar array. This is a unique capability, as no other company is currently able to deploy large-aperture towed sonar arrays below acoustic layer depths from a wave glider. ThayerMahan uses proprietary low power electronics to drive a digital signal processor that enables automatic classification, tracking and instantaneous reporting via satellite. When desired, supplemental acoustic information can be transmitted to the remote operations center to validate or supplement automatic classification. All Outpost functions are executed within the power budget of the wave glider.

Outpost's sister system (SeaWatch) is capable of hosting electronic payloads above the waterline, enabling the collection and fusion of data from radar, communications, meteorological/oceanographic, and optical sensor outputs. Outpost has completed successful end-to-end sea-trials in September 2016 and January 2017 and an integrated operational demonstration in the Summer of 2018. Initial multi-system Outpost deployment on an ISR mission for a government customer is scheduled for the Summer of 2019.

System News

BlueTech Week 2020