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Video: DARPA's ACTUV Unmanned Vessel Helps TALONS Take Flight in Successful Joint Test.
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DARPA Video
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“TALONS showed the advantages of using a low-cost add-on elevated sensor to extend the vision and connectivity of a surface asset and ACTUV demonstrated its ability as a flexible and robust payload truck,” said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager for TALONS. “This demonstration was an important milestone in showing how clever use of unmanned systems could cost-effectively provide improved capabilities.”
Both Patt and Littlefield commended the teams collaborating on the demonstration for accomplishing the testing in a remarkably short period of time: less than 90 days from the go-ahead decision to the actual demonstration. The team members including Maritime Applied Physics Corporation and the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NSWCC) for TALONS, and the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command-Pacific (SSC-PAC) and Leidos for ACTUV. “This ACTUV/TALONS demonstration is the latest in DARPA’s history of cross-program collaboration to develop breakthrough technologies for national security,” said Brad Tousley, director of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office (TTO), which oversees both ACTUV and TALONS. “Where it’s a good fit, joint testing provides the opportunity to show the robustness and interoperability of each program’s research, as well to explore potential future uses that wouldn’t be evident by testing each program separately.” TALONS is part of DARPA’s Phase 1 research for Tern, a joint program between DARPA and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR). Now that at-sea demonstration is complete, DARPA is transitioning TALONS to the Navy. In September 2014, DARPA signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with ONR to jointly fund an extended test phase of an ACTUV prototype. In April 2016, a christening ceremony in Portland, Oregon, marked the vessel’s formal transition from a DARPA-led design and construction project to open-water testing conducted jointly with ONR. DARPA will collaborate with ONR to fully test the capabilities of the vessel and several innovative payloads over the next two years. Pending the results of those tests, the program could transition to the Navy by 2018. |
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