Naval Surface Warfare Center - Panama City

Only U.S. citizens will be considered for positions at this lab. No Dual Citizens will be considered for this facility.

Each student must secure their own transportation. Due to the secure nature of the Naval Facility, individuals without access will not be permitted on base. Therefore, students must be able to drive themselves or carpool to work with someone that has base access.

Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City (NSWC PC) is the U.S. Navy’s premier research and development organization focused on littoral warfare and expeditionary warfare. It is the principal repository of the national expertise in these areas that are absolutely critical to the future of Navy and Marine Corps operations. This expertise is based upon a diverse technical workforce.

A unique feature of NSWC PC that is unduplicated in the United States is the natural operating environment provided by the ready access to the Gulf of Mexico and its associated littoral and coastal regions. It is this characteristic, coupled with the synergistic nature of the organization mission areas, that sets NSWC Panama City apart from other R&D activities. The Gulf of Mexico provides a surrogate environment for most of the littoral areas of the world in which the Navy will find itself operating for the foreseeable future.

ROLES

Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare - Improve the Navy's and Marine Corps' ability to project power ashore by means of amphibious operations. The NSWC PC is the national authority on air-cushion vehicle technology and application, and the interface of these vehicles with the Navy’s amphibious ships. It maintains strong capabilities in research, engineering, technical direction, management and life support for the amphibious warfare, U.S. Marine Corps, and Strategic Sealift systems.
Coastal Operations - The NSWC PC is the national center of expertise for coastal operations. The technologies, systems and equipment developed in support of the Navy needs are applicable in many cases to the solution of non-DOD type problems. The Coastal Operations mission focuses on the transfer of this knowledge and technology base to the solution of problems encountered by local, state, industrial and non-DOD organizations.
Diving, Life Support and Damage Control Systems - Coupled with the tenant commands of the Experimental Diving Unit and the Diving and Salvage Training Center, NSWC PC represents the national center of expertise for military diving. This team addresses all aspects of dive-system development, test and evaluation, and training. The technologies and techniques associated with diving systems have been successfully applied to a variety of non-diving life support systems such as fire-fighting breathing apparatus.
Mine Warfare - The NSWC PC is the recognized world leader in mine countermeasure and mine systems. It is the repository of the Nation’s mine warfare expertise. As such, the NSWC PC maintains a robust spectrum of efforts in research & development, test & evaluation, and in-fleet support of naval airborne, surface, and shallow-water mine countermeasures systems and naval sea mine systems. It is the champion for the transition to organic mine countermeasures. The expertise of the NSWC PC in this critical warfare area is unequalled.
Naval Special Warfare - The NSWC PC is the Navy’s lead laboratory for the research and development of special operations systems with an emphasis on mobility platforms that support the Fleet operator.
Littoral Science and Technology - Under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research, NSWC PC maintains a robust science and technology program relative to the littoral environment. Technology developments focus in the areas of autonomous systems, advanced acoustic, magnetic and electro-optic sensors, modeling and simulation, digital visualizations, signal processing, life support and manned diving, air cushion vehicle design, and ancillary equipment for support of military sealift operations.

MAJOR PROJECTS

Autonomous and Unmanned Systems
Expeditionary Warfare Testbed
Landing Craft, Air Cushion Systems
Littoral Warfare Collaboration Environment Lab
Remote Minehunting System
Swimmer Delivery Vehicle
Underwater Breathing Apparatus
Systems Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis

AREAS OF INTEREST

Sensing Technologies: Basic and applied research in acoustic, electromagnetic, and electro-optic sensing technologies as well as in signal and digital image processing. This includes modeling/predictions of physical phenomena in underwater and airborne environments, experimental/theoretical characterization of sensors and targets, development of prototype sensors/instrumentation to support experiments and validate models and system concepts, development of image processing techniques for Automated Target Recognition, development of in-situ and post mission analysis tools supporting multi-sensor fusion and co-registration techniques, and implementation of advanced processing algorithms in embedded real-time hardware.

Hydromechanics: Dynamics and interaction of single and multiple vehicles, both towed and free-swimming; prediction of nonlinear hydrodynamic forces and moments using rational and analytical methods; dynamic and control of cable-body systems; wake generation and evolution of three-dimensional turbulent wakes partially bounded by a free surface.

Control Systems: Autonomous navigation, guidance, and control of unmanned vehicles; system identification software to implement standard parameter estimation methods; extended kalman filter for design and analysis of multi sensor navigation systems; high speed/parallel processing architectures and algorithms.

Automated Target Recognition (ATR): Computer assisted detection/classification algorithm development; advanced neural network design and neural network architecture/training optimization; morphologically based image processing; image compression/storage/display; high speed/parallel processing architectures and algorithms; automated algorithm development. Emphasis is placed on signals and images collected using sonars, optical sensors, and magnetic sensors.

Unmanned Systems Technology: Basic and applied research with application to air, land, sea surface, and sub-sea surface unmanned vehicles operating in a wide variety of coastal environments, communication links to single and multiple vehicles, navigation, guidance and control, cooperative behaviors, optimal path planning, common control standards, multi-sensor payloads, autonomous launch and recovery, and automated tools to reduce sailor workload.

Applied Engineering: Mechanical, electrical, electronics, computer, software and systems engineering to support developmental and in-service programs in mine warfare, expeditionary warfare, naval special warfare and diving; operational field testing and evaluation; modeling and simulation

Life Sciences: Behavioral studies in support of human factors analysis of military divers and diving equipment

Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis (MSA) supports requirements analysis, concept selection, concept development, systems engineering and integration, tactics development, certification, training, and sustainment in multiple warfare areas including mine and expeditionary maneuver warfare.