A Conversation with Rusty Smith from Applied Physical Sciences
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.
After graduating from the Naval Academy with a BS in Mechanical Engineering, Rusty embarked on a 30-year Navy career as a nuclear submarine officer, retiring with the rank of Captain in 2012. He went on to join the Washington Operations Office of General Dynamics Electric Boat, and now is Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Applied Physical Sciences, a subsidiary of General Dynamics.
We asked Rusty for his thoughts on some important undersea technology questions:
From the perspective as a technical and business leader, what undersea tech innovations are, or will be, game changers, and why?
Nuclear submarines will continue to dominate the undersea domain for the foreseeable future. However, unmanned autonomous systems will play increasingly important roles to augment our submarines. Quantity has a quality of its own, so augmenting nuclear submarines with affordable, attritable unmanned systems makes sense. Therefore, technologies which improve the reliability and endurance of unmanned systems will have increasing importance.
What resources do you use to keep current on undersea tech research, technology, and commercialization?
It is certainly a challenge to keep up in this rapidly changing environment, so this is an “all of the above” thing. However, I continue to find great value in organizations and events which bring government and industry together and facilitate opportunities for networking and collaboration between industry partners and government stakeholders. UTIC definitely fits this description.
In your view, what does it take to build a successful partnership to advance undersea technology?
Bridging the “valley of death” between any R&D project and a program of record requires a cohesive government-industry team based on mutual trust and confidence and open two-way communication and collaboration. While the physical environment of the undersea domain certainly imposes unique technical challenges, the biggest impediment to progress is often achieving alignment amongst the government stakeholders and with the industry team. Especially where unmanned systems are concerned, these emerging undersea technologies do not necessarily fit neatly into the traditional lanes of responsibility of the existing program offices. Therefore, new relationships are necessary in order to close these seams and to build effective government-industry teams which are focused on maturing the technology and delivering a new capability to the Fleet within a timescale relevant to the warfighter. UTIC is specifically designed to facilitate these relationships and build the bridges to advance undersea technology.
Return to: Conversations with Ocean and Undersea Tech Leaders
