The Navy’s elite SEALs are good at a lot of things: infiltrating enemy ports, boarding hostile vessels, hostage rescue. Managing a complex acquisition program, not so much.
Such was the case with the Advanced Seal Delivery System (ASDS), an effort by the Navy and Special Operations Command to build a fleet of mini-subs that could piggyback on a larger submarine, and stealthily deliver SEAL teams to their objective, dry, rested and ready to fight.
After years of development, the program yielded only one prototype mini-sub, at the whopping cost of $885 million. Last year, the submersible caught fire while recharging its lithium-ion batteries at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; faced with a massive repair bill, Special Operations Command decided not to repair the mini-sub.
Now the Navy is taking a look at another mini-sub, developed by a private firm, Submergence Group LLC. William Cole of the Honolulu Advertiser has the story of the company, which developed a new prototype, the S301, on its own dime. Development of the vessel took two years, and $10 million; after a successful demonstration, the Navy recently announced its intent to lease the S301 for another year.
As Cole points out, the S301 is not a military vessel, but the Navy can use it as a part of “risk reduction” effort for future submersible design. And it’s also a project the Pentagon, writ large, should take note of: Submergence Group was able to deliver a working prototype at a fraction of the cost it took defense behemoth Northrop Grumman to produce the first ASDS.
[PHOTO: Wikimedia]
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