A Conversation with Brian McKeon from MIKEL, Inc.
UTIC Intersections–Conversations with Ocean and Undersea Tech Leaders: Conversations with influential leaders in the undersea technology community, soliciting their industry input, guidance and mentorship.
Brian McKeon, recently named CTO of MIKEL, is no stranger to submarines and undersea tech. Brian, earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from WPI and embarked on a career with NAVSEA, earning his PhD in Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering along the way, ultimately becoming a Naval Undersea Warfare Center Department Head. Brian then spent several years at Huntington Ingalls Industries as the Chief Scientist of Unmanned Systems and as the Senior Director of Technology.
We asked Brian for his thoughts on some important undersea technology questions:
From the perspective of a technical leader, what undersea tech innovations are, or will be, game changers, and why?
A great question, and I have a few thoughts on this, starting with…
- Power and energy, which are crucial to almost all undersea systems. Systems like uncrewed vessels, buoys, beacons, weapons, etc. will need to travel further, last longer, and stay on mission. This includes renewable energy innovations including undersea windfarms and rechargeable, high-capacity batteries that are depth rated, better than Lithium Ion.
- I know my peers say that AI/ML and autonomous systems that rely on traditional processing or AI/ML are a game changer in all areas particularly in the long-time horizon, which I agree with. However, in the short- to medium-term we are working on advancements on the interface between the machine and human for maritime systems operating in unique environments. Regulations and complexity of environment are mandating this kind of thinking now, for the greatest near-term benefit.
- I am also keenly interested in efforts to develop and produce materials that can withstand the maritime environment AND be produced in mass quantities inexpensively, helping fulfill some of our industry visions ‘swarms’ and efforts to deliver large seeding of areas. It will be unsustainable build with these materials when they cost $100K to several million per node–that’s a non-starter for these concepts.
- We need more advancements in crucial navigation systems that are low cost and easily deployable. Innovative navigation technology used for sensing the earth’s magnetic fields is an example that provides reliable navigation, and can be operational in GPS denied situations like deep undersea environments.
- Lastly, I will echo what many of my peers are talking about recently, around the need for research in long distance-low cost communication technologies. This tech is crucial for research and military applications, and these types of advancements allow collection and distribution of critical data that enables all the points I made above.
As a life-long engineer and now CTO, what resources do you use when you want to keep current on undersea tech research, technology, and commercialization?
I try to use a range of resources to stay current on undersea tech trends. On the public side, I am finding the latest machine learning tools like ChatGPT and its peers are great resources for background tech and commercialization research. My team gets a lot of good info and collaboration from classified conferences, including the Unmanned Maritime Systems Technology (UMST) and Submarine Tech Symposium. Of course good collaborative sharing and discussions with the professors and researchers at local universities like MIT, URI, UMASS can be greatly helpful to stay current on today’s and tomorrow’s undersea innovations. And, of course, the UTIC website and social media.
In your view, what does it take to build a successful partnership to advance undersea technology?
From my perspective, it is imperative that the entire life-cycle of a new innovative technology be represented in the partnership. In other words, no large unknowns can exist within the partnership. Successful partnerships need representation from manufacturers, integration, logistics, etc. to help advance undersea technology in our industry.
We know this can be challenging in some instances because the buy-in from the range of organizationsneeded is significant. Getting that early collaborative buy-in from ecosystem partners is the first key step to gaining future commitments for government or commercial investment, making it essential for the advancement of undersea technology.
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