New Maritime Technology For Navy SEALS on the Way.

• Date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

Navy SEALs--some of the U.S. military's most elite forces --are tasked with carrying out covert, dangerous and challenging missions across the globe. To assist them, Special Operations Command is investing in new maritime technology that will give them a tactical advantage.

"One of the primary things that make the SEALs unique within the [special operations forces] community is the environment that they operate in," said Lisa Sanders, director of SOCOM's science and technology office.

While SEALs operate in a variety of domains, they often find themselves conducting missions in the maritime environment. Choppy seas and murky waters present a number of challenges to them, including limited access to communications, she said during a meeting with reporters at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Florida.

"We have been focusing on technologies particularly in the area of underwater communications," she noted. Because radio frequency does not travel in the water column, "communicating in that space right now is very, very limited, so we're working on some underwater communications to help them."

On the S&T side, the command is looking at a variety of ways to address the need, she said.

"One of the things that we try to do is open the aperture wide," she said. "We try to identify the problem that we have and seek other people's ideas on how they could address that. So we talk about the distance that they need to be able to communicate, the amount of information they need to be able to communicate, and allow the technologists to come out with the technological approach to resolve that issue."

Special Operations Command's program executive office for maritime is also developing new communication technology, John Bailey, chief engineer at the office, told National Defense.

"Really when you think about where we're trying to go with maritime communications, it's the whole network," he said.

Jim Knudson, program manager for special operations forces combat diving, said this network will connect individual divers to surface assets and to other divers, giving them clear communications and access to text and data.

"We have to have that data rate that allows them to have clear comms, positioning and so forth back to the vehicles, back to the host where they are coming from," he said. This is particularly important as divers work increasingly in colder and deeper water columns, he...