Rockin’ the boat: ThayerMahan’s bid to boost submarine production

The Day

By Brian Hallenbeck

November 30, 2024


Groton ― From the oceans’ depths, ThayerMahan’s Outpost system hears all.

But it’s some noise above the surface that has the local high-tech vendor angling for a significant role in undersea warfare. Simply put, ThayerMahan executives believe the technology they’ve developed and deployed can provide some relief for a U.S. submarine industrial base with lagging production schedules.

“They’re on the right track,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said this week, referring to ThayerMahan’s pitch.

Reports of delays in submarine production have appeared in recent weeks in military publications, with National Defense quoting Rear Adm. Jonathan Rucker, the Navy’s program executive officer for attack submarines, as saying it will be a challenge to meet a 2028 production goal of three submarines a year ― two of the Virginia-class fast-attack variety and one of the ballistic missile-firing Columbia class ― while maintaining existing boats.

Rucker, who spoke at a symposium, said U.S. shipyards will not meet a goal of 1.5 submarines this year, instead coming in closer to 1.3 boats.

In October, General Dynamics’ chairman and chief executive officer, Phebe Novakovic, said Electric Boat’s work on Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines at its yards in Groton and Quonset Point, R.I., would be scaled back because of supply-chain issues that delayed delivery of construction components, the U.S. Naval Institute News reported.

Into the fray comes ThayerMahan, whose Outpost system can perform undersea surveillance for a tiny fraction of what a submarine costs. An Outpost consists of an unmanned surface vessel that tows an array of acoustic sensors that scan the depths, collecting digital data and transmitting it to an onshore base where processors communicate with users in near-real time.

ThayerMahan collaborated on Outpost with Ocius Technology, an Australian developer of unmanned vessels, and has taken delivery of two of them. In an April demonstration, Outpost, deployed 10 miles offshore, identified undersea, surface and airborne contacts in the vicinity of San Diego, Calif.

Michael Connor, ThayerMahan’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in an interview last week an Outpost system costs “on the order of $2 million.” With it operating 90% of the time and ThayerMahan inspecting it and providing maintenance every 90 days, an Outpost can last three to five years, Connor said.

A Virginia-class submarine, on the other hand, costs up to $5 billion to build and requires a 130-man crew, he said.

Deploying an Outpost system requires sending four or five people to sea. On shore, one pilot could operate 10 to 20 Output systems while at ThayerMahan’s Operations Center, one acoustics analyst can review data from five to 10 Outpost systems.

Such sparing use of resources is exactly what Connor, a retired vice admiral, had in mind when he co-founded ThayerMahan in 2016 after a 35-year Navy career in which he commanded U.S. submarine forces from 2012 to 2015.

Covering the undersea domain

Connor said he and others predicted the current state of submarine production.

“Where we are today was forseeable,” he said. “The closure of (military) bases, the loss of human capacity in boatyards ... we lost a lot of skilled people. We haven’t got the industrial might advantage. ... We need to do things more cost-effectively.”

ThayerMahan has taken a “Silicon Valley approach,” Connor said, advocating for a need, raising private capital and securing the Navy’s interest in the company’s innovations. The Navy has provided some support for Outpost, he said, and has funded an independent study of its capabilities and reliability. The study found the system meets Navy requirements.

Courtney and other members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, including Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, all Democrats, have been supportive of ThayerMahan.

Scaling up the Outpost project will involve greater investment and U.S. Department of Defense support, in effect raising the stakes, Connor said. As soon as 2026, Outpost could be designated a DOD “Program of Record,” meaning it will appear as a line item in the federal budget ― “a big deal in the defense industry,” according to Connor.

“What we have is truly a ‘disruptive technology,’” he said. “We’re proposing to do things for a lot less money.”

John Russ, president of ThayerMahan’s ocean technologies unit, agreed that what ThayerMahan is proposing ― a government-owned, contractor-operated approach to undersea surveillance ― would disrupt the status quo.

Courtney, though still optimistic that shipyards can meet a three-subs-a-year production schedule in 2028, acknowledged that AUKUS, the trilateral agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to supply Australia with up to five nuclear-powered submarines, starting in the 2030s, promises to put additional pressure on the submarine industrial base.

All the more reason, he said, the Navy should consider doing business with ThayerMahan.

“The bottom line is the (submarine) fleet needs to grow and AUKUS is a big commitment,” Courtney said. “ThayerMahan is a really positive option for the Navy to make sure the undersea domain is going to be covered. It’s always been Mike Connor’s view that ThayerMahan can extend the reach of submarines, allowing them to concentrate on other things (besides surveillance).

“It shows we have options to make sure undersea threats are deterred.”

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