HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- After its announcement about plans for outer space with Aerojet, Teledyne Brown is branching out to "marine space."
The Huntsville-based company has been awarded a contract valued at $383 million for a replacement craft to transport Special Operations Forces on their missions. The work is projected to add about 50 jobs here.
The contract from the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is to design, develop, test, manufacture and sustain the Shallow Water Combat Submersible (SWCS).
Teledyne Brown President Rex Geveden: "Special ops command is an increasingly important component of the military. The nature of warfare is changing." (The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz)
"We're particularly pleased to win this contract," said Teledyne Brown President Rex Geveden. "This is more in the way of engineered systems ... from the concept to the delivery of product."
The SWCS System is a manned combat submersible vehicle specifically designed to drop off and pull out special ops forces in high-threat areas.
"Special ops command is an increasingly important component of the military," Geveden said. "The nature of warfare is changing."
Teledyne Brown developed a full-scale interior mock-up of the SWCS vehicle, provided hullform models and demonstrated the system in a development contract awarded last October. The company was then awarded the engineering development contract.
"We are very pleased to support our Special Operations Forces in this critical program," said Robert Mehrabian, chair, president and chief executive officer of Teledyne Technologies, the parent of Teledyne Brown. "Winning this program validates our continuing strategy of integrating advanced technologies into complex systems for our customers in the marine defense, ocean science and offshore energy markets."
Geveden also said the company has been moving to "marine space" for the last three to four years.
"This is a new market and new customer," he said. "We've been planning this (in a desire) to diversify our portfolio."
The craft will be made at Teledyne's facility on Sparkman Drive.
"We have the capacity and the capability to do this," said Mike DeFatta, vice president of manufactured products.
"The design will be here and the manufacturing will be here," Geveden said. "This is a new kind of work for the company and the area."
DeFatta said "our initial win probability was not very high, but the team worked very hard to come up with the winning approach leading to this award."
"We looked at this for a long time," he said. "(It took) a lot of teamwork and a lot of work."