The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division, Keyport’s Range of the Future project engaged the Northwest Tech Bridge in order to speed up the availability of resources for the upgrading of underwater testing ranges in the Salish Sea.

The Navy’s Northwest (NW) Tech Bridge is one of the original Tech Bridges established by the office of NavalX in order to provide a bridge between centers of innovation, like NUWC Keyport, and resources across the DoD, industry, and academia.

NUWC Keyport’s Range of the Future is focused on upgrading multiple underwater ranges to meet modern testing requirements said Dr. Martin Renken, a range technology subject matter expert.

“The Range of the Future is a project to modernize and rebuild the underwater range infrastructure that is used to support testing and evaluation of underwater systems,” said Renken. “The goal is to accomplish more than just replacing aging underwater cables and sensors. Instead, we want to modernize and improve flexibility so that we can more easily adapt to current and future technologies.”

NW Tech Bridge proved to be a resource the Range of the Future team could use to advance its mission.  The Tech Bridge enabled the Range of the Future team to quickly complete the Naval Innovation Process Adoption (NIPA), which allows for the speedy adoption of new technologies.

“The NIPA process and the support from the NW Tech Bridge enabled us to achieve more in less time, and allowed us to reach a greater audience than we could have on our own,” Renken said. “Beginning with a rapid capture of ideas, which was quickly followed up in the form of a well-crafted request for information, we hope to learn from and engage many local businesses and other potential partners.”

Johannes Schonberg, NW Tech Bridge director, said the Tech Bridges exist to help centers of innovation find resources and partners with greater efficiency in order to expand the Navy’s advantage over potential future challenges.

“We have amazing engineers doing incredible work, and NavalX and NW Tech Bridge provide extra capacity and tools to give them the time and focus to tackle their own challenges,” said Schonberg.  

Schonberg said NavalX and Tech Bridge are dedicated to supporting the workforce by facilitating communications between potential partners as well as assisting with innovation processes such as NIPA.

The NIPA process will lead to an “industry day” event in late February that will give the Range of the Future team an opportunity to meet with civilian industry. Schonberg expects the contacts made during the industry day will enable the Range of the Future team to significantly advance the range’s capabilities with increased non-traditional representation at the industry day.

Renken said the Range of the Future team will continue to rely on the NW Tech Bridge as the work upgrading the ranges goes forward.

“The NW Tech Bridge facilitated as both a critical link as well as an accelerator in our efforts here,” said Renken. “They provided resources which became key informational requirements that morphed into a request for information overnight linking our needs with industrial leaders and technological innovators.”

Get more information about the Navy from U.S. Navy Facebook or Twitter.

For more news from Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport, visit www.navy.mil/.