A Conversation with Don McCormack of McLaughlin Research

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.

Don McCormack has had a long and distinguished executive career in undersea engineering and government service.  An engineering graduate of UMass Dartmouth, Don has held many important and successful civilian posts for the Navy, including the Technical Director at Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Executive Director of the NAVSEA Warfare Centers.  More recently, Don joined McLaughlin Research Corporation as the Director of Strategy and Business Development.

We asked Don for his thoughts on some important undersea technology questions:

From your perspective, what undersea tech innovations are, or will be, game changers, and why?

I see several important technical and engineering advancements helping us improve the way we work in the undersea environment:

• First, the tech world has been a buzz about AI and ML for some time, but specifically for undersea operations these technologies have greatly advanced our target recognition and autonomy capability while improving our classifiers.
• Endurance is crucial for undersea operations and the improved energy sources beyond batterieshave helped with longer lasting remote sensors and vehicles.
• Every day we are also seeing improvements in undersea communications, at greater depths, at greater speeds and with more covert capabilities.
• Building on my first point of the use of compute power, we have significantly advanced Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and digital twins to rapidly—and cost effectively—troubleshoot issues and test new capabilities.
• Finally, and maybe most importantly, we have used the tools above and others to better understand the ocean and undersea environment, to make operations more seamless, and to improve placement and effectiveness.

As an experienced leader and engineer, what resources do you use when you want to keep current on undersea tech research, technology, and commercialization? 

We have great resources and a great network of people in this area, so I have lots to choose from.  In particular, I often turn to:

• The Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, or AUVSI, which is a great organization helping advance unmanned systems, related robotics, autonomy, etc.
• I study the SBIR Broad Agency Announcements (BAA), which provides programmatic updates, research goals and guidelines and important funding priorities for the small business supplier community.
• I scan daily defense and tech email newsletters such as the Early Bird Brief from Defense News for stories and insights on undersea tech and other defense opportunities.
• Conversing on LinkedIn and talking often with my CTO and tech director colleagues.
• And UTIC of course!  I especially enjoy attending and participating in UTIC’s Industry Days.

In your view, what does it take to build a successful partnership to advance undersea technology?

A key requirement of any partnership in this area is to start with clear requirements. Without this clarity, you can waste a lot of time and resources.  From a defense perspective, it is important to prioritize your tech planning and advancements around these clear needs.

The DOD’s Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) provide a good guidance on how to think about the steps needed to evaluate tech to meet stated defense needs, starting with research and observation to assess how tech can work in an operational environment (TRL 1).

In any discussion of partnerships and effectiveness around defense and undersea technology, you need to also quickly collaborate and coordinate on how budgets match program goals, especially with partnering teams that are working independently.  Internal and external partners should improve their communications and look for complimentary capabilities, both of which will build mutual trust.

Lastly, I always encourage partners to team with their technical clients inside the Warfare Centers (WFC) and Fleet command, to work on shared Conops with the identified tech transition sponsor.

Return to: Conversations with Ocean and Undersea Tech Leaders