Bladder Delivery System for UUVs and Weapons Navy SBIR FY2011.2 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2011.2 Topic No.: N112-155 Topic Title: Bladder Delivery System for UUVs and Weapons Proposal No.: N112-155-0304 Firm: ADA Technologies, Inc. 8100 Shaffer Parkway Suite #130 Littleton, Colorado 80127-4107 Contact: Thierry Carriere Phone: (303) 792-5615 Web Site: www.adatech.com Abstract: For more than the past 100 years, increasing the range and autonomy of ships, submarines and more recently unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) has been a primary goal for navies around the world and their ship designers. Many modern critical naval operations such as accessing strategic, denied maritime areas and operating and surviving attacks in hazardous and/or hostile environments require further improvements in these areas. High-performance UUVs would be particularly well suited to successfully execute such missions but their autonomy is still generally limited to between 10 and 80 hours of operations. Advanced propulsion systems could increase autonomy to weeks or months, vastly improving UUV's capabilities to carry out these missions as well as enabling much more ambitious and complex ones. ADA Technologies is partnering with Aero Tec Laboratories (ATL) to propose the development of a refillable twin-skin bladder system for air-independent propulsion systems. The bladder system that we are proposing will utilize materials compatible with stored reactants for a minimum of 30 days. The concept for this device is to be able to provide a controllable fuel flow and expel the entirety of the fuel/oxidizer from the bladder system. Benefits: The UUV is still a young market with low unit sales. Many models are one-offs and tied to specific government programs. However, UUVs growth is expected to accelerate in the next five years. DOD spending on UUVs is expected to grow to about $80M/y by 2016. The torpedo market is significantly larger today. For example, in May, Taiwan announced its intention to spend $860M to buy MK-48 and MK-54 torpedoes from the US. On the downside, weapons programs have long lifetimes (over 20 years) and insertion of new technology is an arduous task for any new component supplier. In summary, both the UUV and torpedo markets have some future sales potential for a bladder supplier, but it will be difficult to realize in the next five years. Beyond this horizon, the UUV market may grow rapidly and offer an interesting opportunity. At the same time (about 2016), the retirement of the MK-46 torpedoes may also open new perspectives for AIP component suppliers. In the meantime, R&D contracts from the government may provide a revenue stream for technology developers in this sector (such as ADA) before actual hardware sales. Return