For the first time ever, Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) and Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) entitled Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)-Based Threat Detection and Intervention System on February 20, 2022.
A CRADA, which is one of the tools that fall under Technology Transfer (T2), occurs between one or more federal laboratories and one or more non-federal parties where the federal lab can commit resources such as personnel, facilities, equipment, intellectual property, or other resources—but not funds—to the non-federal party. It allows the federal government to license technologies to private industry, academia, and state and local government while also allowing the CRADA partner to provide funds to the federal lab.
“Allowing private industry to license federal technologies is good stewardship of taxpayer money and increases development of commercial technologies, which supports the national defense and economy,” said NSWC PCD Technology Transfer Manager Paige George. “The benefit to the partner is access to federal resources which could lead to future partnerships/projects/first-come-first-serve access to the technology portfolio, relationships, etc. The benefit to the government is agility because the time and cost it takes for the government to take a program from start to finish in most cases is much more expensive and time consuming than having a company come in and license a technology and manufacture on a large scale.”