Incat Crowther, Belrose, Australia, will provide naval architecture and design services for HII’s Romulus unmanned surface vessels under a U.S. Navy contract for its Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel program.
The vessel designer’s Louisiana-based team will support the project as it moves from autonomy trials and evaluation into production and deployment.
“We are proud to partner with HII on Romulus and help deliver this important capability to the U.S. Navy,” Grant Pecoraro, Incat Crowther’s managing director for North America, said in a statement. “The award of this contract is validation of the Romulus design and the platform’s capabilities.”
Romulus is a modular family of unmanned surface vessels that uses HII’s open-architecture Odyssey Advanced Autonomy Solutions. The vessels are designed to accommodate current and emerging Navy requirements.
HII plans to use regional shipbuilders and manufacturing partners to produce the vessels. The company said the distributed production approach will expand available capacity and support repeatable construction as Navy demand grows.
“Unmanned vessels ultimately must be built, integrated, tested and sustained as part of a fleet,” said Duane Fotheringham, president of the unmanned systems group in HII’s Mission Technologies division. “As the nation’s largest shipbuilder, HII understands that challenge from both sides.”
Incat Crowther’s work will continue through the build program, with its U.S.-based naval architects and engineers supporting HII and the Navy.
“Our team of US-based naval architects and engineers are looking forward to continuing to support the HII team and the U.S. Navy as the program moves from autonomy proving trials and evaluation to a fleet-wide build and deployment,” Pecoraro said.
