The deep ocean, covering the vast majority of our planet's seafloor, represents a critical domain for science, industry, and defense. Gaining responsive and scalable access to this environment offers a significant strategic advantage.
The Deep Thoughts program seeks to develop a new generation of small autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs) to meet the challenges and opportunities of this domain. Our vision is to develop AUVs that are:
- Independent of long-lead and architecturally constraining components.
- Quick to design, produce, integrate, and test, reducing timelines from years to months or even weeks.
- Easily deployable from a wide variety of host platforms.
The program will leverage advancements in materials, manufacturing, and next-generation structural and mechanical design technologies to dramatically reduce the size, cost, and development time of deep-ocean systems.