L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (LHX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. I'm Mark Kenny, General Manager of L3Harris Unmanned Maritime Systems. Thank you for joining us today as we do the product unveiling of our newest unmanned undersea vehicle, the Iver4 580. Let's start with a few basic ground rules for the webinar today. As attendees, you will not be live for questions and answers. [Operator Instructions] L3Harris is a world-class space, air, sea and maritime capabilities provider to the U.S. and allied navies around the world. With over 48,000 employees, 20,000 of which are scientists and engineers, we provide game-changing capability for our war fighters. In unmanned maritime systems, we have built over 300 UUVs and 130 unmanned surface vessels, USVs. Additionally, we supply payloads, sensors, autonomy, automation and cyber capabilities to our unmanned platforms. As you likely know, unmanned is key to the Navy's distributed maritime operations strategy. Affordable platforms that can be set forward with no manning decreases costs for the Navy as well as reduces the risk to our sailors. They can conduct the dangerous and dirty missions forward, which include survey operations, seabed warfare, undersea warfare, intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance collection as well as supporting naval special warfare missions. On the commercial side, oil and gas industry use unmanned vessels for survey and security efforts, again reducing their costs and reducing their risk to their operators. L3Harris is an agile and an innovative team. We are proud that we are also mission focused. We are side-by-side with our operators, whether it be military or commercial, as we train and operate these vessels. Additionally, we're involved from the beginning in the concept development and CONOPS so that we ensure we're delivering the capability that war fighters need. Although our impact is across the wide spectrum of unmanned, we're focusing today on an undersea warfare capabilities. We are joined by Daryl Slocum. Daryl runs the Unmanned Undersea Vehicle business from his facility in Imperial Beach, California. Please welcome Daryl Slocum. Over to you, Daryl.

Thanks, Mark, and welcome, everyone. I'm Daryl Slocum, and I'm here at the L3Harris Imperial Beach, California office to show you the new Iver4 580. Let me start by giving you a little history about why we created this version of Iver UUV. The Iver family of systems has been in production for over 15 years. Just about 2 years ago, we introduced the 9-inch Iver4 to the world. The Iver4 900 revolutionized the small-diameter vehicle market with next-generation technology. Now it is a proven, reliable platform that has been used to complete various complex missions. We're always working with our operators to learn more about their missions and how we can help make their jobs easier and safer. The Iver4 580 was born out of the operator requests for a small vehicle with advanced mission capabilities. In architecting this small UUV, we've leveraged the reliability and advanced performance of the Iver4 platform. This new vehicle is called the Iver4 580 because it's 5.8 inches in diameter. This offers the operators a more portable package and a smaller overall mission footprint. It is less than 100 pounds and a single person portable. Size and weight are extremely important factors in allowing our operators to be as expeditionary as possible and to choose the correct tool for the job. Let's take a closer look at this UUV from nose to tail. The Iver4 580 features titanium and carbon fiber construction. This is unique to the Iver4 family of vehicles. This method of construction makes the vehicle more durable in harsh water environments that our vehicles operate in every day. All of the Iver4 580s feature a standard full suite of sensors. The sensor suite includes sidescan sonars, the inertial navigation system, doppler velocity log, sound velocity probe, all in the contained in one package, just to name a few. Years of sensor integration experience on all the other Iver platforms has produced the cleanest data with the highest position accuracy available with industry-leading inertial and acoustic navigation sensors. We also work closely with our industry partners to integrate the latest technologies from sensor manufacturers into the Iver UUVs. For example, the Iver4 580 is carrying the first -- is the first UUV to carry the new just released EdgeTech 2205B dual frequency side scan, interferometric dosimetry and gap fill system. That is a mouthful. With its robust sensor suite, the Iver4 580 delivers the operators the highest quality data available on every mission in the most compact overall package. In addition, the Iver4 580 features giggy download speeds. This further minimizes the mission downtime and allowing those operators to download key mission data quickly and deliver results faster. One of the most unique features of the Iver4 580 is the true hot swappable battery sections. This section -- these sections are wet mateable and can be swapped in the field with no tools. With a fresh set of batteries installed in just under 5 minutes, the Iver4 580 can be back on mission quickly. This minimizes mission downtime and maximizes mission effectiveness. These individual sections can be shipped as nonhazardous materials, even on passenger airlines. Let me show you how easy it is to separate the fore and aft sections. And while I'm doing this, I'll note that one of the other things that we did with this system is that we have a backup battery that is currently in the forward part of the section. So as I remove this, if this vehicle had been already aligned by the INS, we would not lose the INS calibration. So we can take the band off, and we just wiggle it around a little bit, and off it comes. So this gives us about 15 minutes to swap this battery section back in. And if we do that within 15 minutes, the INS will continue to be aligned, and so that saves the operator a lot of time. We're back in mission quickly. You can see from the camera, although it's probably a little difficult to see, but these are wet pluggable connectors. So this can be done in the rain or in contested environments. All right. So let me give you a few examples on how our military customers might use an Iver4 580. Various expeditionary units, such as the Marine Recon, Naval Special Warfare, Fleet Survey Team, just to name a few, are all tasked with characterizing beaches and coastal inlets to assess their suitability for amphibious assaults and to determine whether expeditionary assets can explore existing navigational channels. These assessments require rapid, accurate hydrographic survey data and seafloor imagery to support all of the ISR activities that occur when accessing -- assessing the suitable landing zones. Performing expeditionary hydrographic surveys, another mouthful, is denied -- in denied environments requires a portable and reliable solution, like the Iver4 580, that is easily transported, assembled and deployed. The Iver4 580 offers a form factor and weight that permits it to be broken into 2 sections for carriage in a tactical backpack. Assembly can occur on-site without risking internal electronics as -- because these are completely sealed sections, and the UUV can be deployed for near-coastal hydrographic surveys quickly. On the commercial side, in the aftermath of such a -- as a major storm, there are requirements to rapidly assess coastal ports, harbors and shorelines to identify submerged and hazards to navigation that are threats to vessel traffic and the general public. A community's ability to transport cargo and fuels from ship to shore, especially after devastating storms, is critical to managing that recovery. UUVs, like the Iver4 580, provide a rapid flyaway capability for both public safety and commercial survey personnel to effectively assess underwater conditions, pre- and post-event in order to accurately characterize conditions and reestablish normal port and waterway operations. A single surveyor operating from a vessel opportunity or shoreline can deploy the Iver4 580 vehicle as a force multiplier to collect data in a short period of time. This minimizes risk to personnel and maximizes net revenue for the survey coverage. Thanks for listening to my overview of the Iver4 580. Now let's send you out to the water to Tim Pilegard to check out how easy it is to deploy. Take it away, Tim.

Thanks, Daryl. My name is Tim Pilegard. I'm an L3Harris field engineer based out of the Imperial Beach office here in San Diego. I'm on our 34-foot vessel Antares here in San Diego Bay. As you can see, I have an Iver4 580 right here with me. For point of comparison, behind me here is the Iver4 900, and you can see it's a much more manned portable solution. I'm going to demonstrate a one-man launch for you right now. Once the vehicle has been deployed, we can use our splash-proof rugged handheld, not only to start and stop missions, but to monitor the vehicle while it's on the surface and to manually drive it. And with that, we're going to hand it over to Mark in Virginia. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Tim. We enjoyed that view of you on the water in San Diego Bay on launch of the Iver4 580. And thanks, Daryl, for that detailed discussion on the Iver4. Now we're going to shift to our question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions] Let me call up the questions, and we'll begin.

The first one is an anonymous attendee, wants to know what's the difference between an Iver4 580 and an Iver 900. Daryl?

First question out of the gate from an anonymous attendee. I don't think I answer questions from anonymous attendees. Do we, Mark? But anyways, I'm just kidding, obviously. So the Iver4 family has just grown. We went from our original 9-inch diameter vehicle to a 5.8-inch diameter vehicle. They both share similar architectures. So if you plan a mission, you can plan a mission and execute it on either a 5.8-inch diameter or a 9-inch diameter. The big difference in a quick way would be that the Iver 580 is really its hot-swappable battery sections for quick and easy, and it's much -- it's a bit smaller and lighter weight. The Iver 900 carries a series of different hot swappable in the field payloads. So this one has a hot-swappable battery that can grow and shrink as needed for extended missions and a smaller package, and the 900 has a swappable forward payload section to support that. It has greater -- the 900 has greater endurance and can carry larger payloads. This one, smaller payloads and not quite the endurance but is a smaller footprint.

Great, Daryl. The next question is from a customer. They want to know what is the endurance of the Iver 580 with various power supplies.

So that's a very difficult question to answer without a bit more details because the system is actually designed to turn off all of its subsystems as necessary when it doesn't need to use them. So if the mission -- if it has to transit from A -- point A to point B for an extended period of time, we're not drawing power from these additional sensors. So if we were all sensors on in an under 99-inch configuration, we can go anywhere from 12 to 18 hours depending on the battery -- the extension of -- the battery extension -- how big the battery is, essentially. The Iver4 580 supports multiple different types of batteries as far as the length goes. Also supports nickel metal hydride or lithium ion. So it varies anywhere from -- if you have nickel metal hydride, 8 hours to up to 18 hours depending on the configuration of the mission.

Great. This question is from [ Will Davies ]. He asks, "Will the Iver4 580 include an EP section for customer custom payloads?"

Well, thank you for that question, Will. And the answer is this is a very specifically focused vehicle as of today. The Iver3 580 will continue to be supported and will continue to deliver vehicles because that one has a much wider range of sensor payloads that have been adapted for it. The 580 does support behavioral backseat computer behaviors on a CPU inside. So it does do that. For additional payloads, we'll be offering a forward section -- an EP section as well down the road. But this configuration as of today, we would lean towards the Iver3 for those extended payloads.

This question is from Rear Admiral Retired [ Gary Rosholt ]. Gary and I had worked closely together in the Navy. He asked, "Does the Iver4 580 support our new, innovative Open Water Power battery technology?"

So it -- the 900, as most on the line might know, the Iver4 900 is successfully carrying what we call the Open Water Power waste jettisoning system -- sorry, waste onboard system, and we're moving towards a waste jettisoning system. And we've successfully demonstrated 40 hours of endurance using that battery on the Iver4 900. The Iver4 580 is smaller in diameter. So we have -- we do have an opportunity to put an Open Water Power battery on here. The system does support it well with these wet pluggable sections. But currently, we're going to execute on the Iver4 900 and then look to see what the opportunities are to put it on the 580.

Great. This is from an anonymous attendee. "Is it possible to use my existing Iver4 900 mission planning and post-mission analysis tools on the new Iver4 580? Also, can I use -- or is there a simulator for the 580?"

Yes. Short answer is yes and yes. So from a mission planning standpoint, the mission planner will actually -- you can tell the mission planner which type of vehicle you have, and it will help you identify what sensors you may have available to you and so on. But if you were to design something for a 900 and put it on a 580, it will work. They're equal inside. They're running the same, what we call, UVC or the vehicle controller. So it's agnostic from that perspective. So yes, absolutely. And I think I forgot the second -- I think I forgot the second half of that question, Mark. What was the second half of that question?

Yes, it was the simulator.

Oh, the simulator, yes. The simulator supports our whole fleet of vehicles. So the Iver3 580, the Iver4 900 and the Iver4 580 as well. Sorry about that.

Great. Great. This question is from [ Ryan Edwards ], and a couple of other attendees asked the same question. Ryan wants to know what is the max operating depth for the 580, the 900 and other Iver vehicles.

So the Iver 580, its default operating depth is 200-meter rated. We do have an option to take it to 300 meters. The Iver4 900 is defaulted at 300 meters or 1,000 feet. I think that answers the question. So...

Great. This question is from [ Travis ]. He wants to know what options there are for unmanned launch and recovery and what sea states would limit UUV operations.

Yes. So it's an ongoing -- it's another interesting question. So 2 questions there. One from an ASV. So we do have ongoing efforts to do launch and recovery from an ASV. Obviously, we're launching first. We were supposed to demonstrate that towards the end of this year, our ability to launch an Iver from an ASV. So that's exciting work that we've got ongoing. From a recovery standpoint, we're doing several recovery events off of several different platforms. Some of them unmanned, and some of them manned. So we'll be utilizing that knowledge base that we're gaining with that behavior, and it will be sprinkled across ASVs and surface vehicle for autonomous recovery. From a sea state standpoint, the vehicles are a lot happier in the water, quite frankly, than we are to be on top of it most of the time. I can speak from personal experience. I've been out in 10- or 12-foot seas doing recoveries. And like I said, the vehicle is fairly happy about being out there and on the surface when us, as humans, would prefer not to be. They are built robustly. That's why we have the titanium and carbon fiber. And we actually just drag them up -- drag them out of the water to recover them. So the nice thing about the 580 is that it is a bit smaller, under 100 pounds, drag it over to the side of a rib or a platform; where the Iver4 900, a bit more weight, about at 220 pounds but is recoverable depending on sea state with 2 individuals.

Great. This question is from somebody that's we're well familiar with and most on the net will know, [ Joe Reck ]. Joe was a former UUVRON sailor, who's now Capt. Pete Small's lead for training at PMS 406. So welcome, Joe. His question delves into CONOPS and what the Iver4 580 was built to support. So he specifically asks, "What are the warfare groups or missions that the Iver4 580 is designed for from an naval perspective? And what specific training is or will be available to the war fighter for this vessel?" And while you're at it, could you talk a little bit about the training that you provide onsite at Imperial Beach?

Sure. Take that. So the first question, what CONOPS or what work do we see or envision for the 580, and I provided one during that brief overview, but it's really our expeditionary teams that are going to utilize the size and the footprint, the flyaway capability, ones that may not need quite the endurance or some of the more sophisticated payloads that are on the Iver4 900. This allows them to get on station, as I mentioned, even backpackable with 2 sailors, 2 folks. And we can get into remote areas. We can be deployed off of any ship of opportunity. So it really opens up the expeditionary piece, arrive on site and get on station, get on water quickly, both on the military side as well as the commercial side. The same capabilities that we have developed over the last 15 years are near shore, working right there in the surf zone, getting the job done when the environmental conditions when we should be taking our war fighters out of [ those ] conditions so we can do shoreline surveys in areas that are contested and/or after storms and things that we don't want to be sending craft in. So that's really where this shines -- this vehicle shines, is gives enough endurance to get the job done in those more expeditionary needs. With regard to training, the nice thing about the Iver family is if you're trained up on the Iver family, you'll be able to use the Iver 580 as well -- Iver4 580. So if you've come to a training for an Iver3 or an Iver4, we really do try to keep the internals, the architecture, the software, the same software, all the same software operates on it. So you can really move from Iver3 to Iver4 900, Iver4 580 as a tool in the toolbox to execute against the mission. So -- and the last, I think, that you threw in there, Mark, is for me to give a plug to the team out here in Imperial Beach that does training. We have staff here, full-time, that are designed to be on the water and in the room. We do a 5-day basic training course, 5-day extended, more advanced training course. In 5 days, I can tell you day 1, you're in a classroom, kind of making sure everybody understands the terms and getting to actually plan missions both in real -- both mission planner but also executing it on a simulator. And then they graduate and actually take those missions they planned on a Monday and are out on Tuesday executing those missions and processing the data Tuesday afternoon. So we do a very focused training for 5 days. We have one trainer for every 3 operators. And we have vehicles so that everybody has an opportunity to interact with the vehicle both in mission planning as well as deployment recovery and the minimal maintenance that needs to be done on the vehicles. I should mention we have 2 boat assets out here. You saw Tim on Antares, and we're on boat there. We also have a 46-foot boat. It's a jet boat that is a working aluminum craft that is also designed more ocean going, and we take care of the entire process. So let the trainers focus on being trained and not on whether or not we're going to have a boat or whether we're going to have access to the water. We do beach launch and recovery. We do open ocean launch and recovery. So it really gets the operators exposed to all those different environments. That was pretty long-winded. Sorry, Mark.

That was good. Good stuff. And Joe, just -- Daryl designs, his team designed that 9-inch vehicle you saw in the app deck. For that sweet spot, small diameter and mid-diameter UUV. We've taken that, as Daryl said, 13 years of experience in an Iver4 900 and packaged it in a smaller wrap in the 5.75 inch diameter to have more utility in expeditionary missions. So we work closely with the war fighters, EOD, Marine Core, Navy, Naval Special Warfare, to give them what we think they need. And they were looking for a more expeditionary version of the 900 that can be used in the missions that Daryl described. So thank you for that question.

Yes, that was great.

We're going to shift to [ Tom Rannel's ] question. Tom asked about cyber hardening. Is there -- are product cyber hardening? Or what is the ongoing effort to cyber hardening our Iver4 family?

So that's a job that's -- the short answer is that's a job that's never going to be done. I think it's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Once you get finished, you get to start all over again and go back and start at the beginning. The cyber hardening -- unfortunately, in today's environment, the competitors are always pushing the envelope on doing new things to break in. So we have to stay ahead of that. We're very proud at L3Harris. We set the bar for cyber hardening all of our autonomous vehicles. You can imagine working in contested environments. We can't allow that critical information to get into the wrong hands. So we take it incredibly to heart, and we have dedicated resources that are working to push the envelope every day. Having said that, the original Iver started as and still is a commercial product. So we're working within the bounds of taking that commercial product and cyber hardening each and every aspect of it, including the network, including the operating system, including communications. Our cyber hardened communications are being rolled out for our military customers, and that -- all of those things that get done to the Iver family are inherited automatically by the Iver4 line, which is Iver4 900 and now the Iver4 580.

Great. This question is from [ Deborah Barnett ] in Australia. And she's asking, "With the COVID-19 travel restrictions, would we consider virtual training for the Iver4?"

It's a great question. And coming from Australia, I can understand, for sure. I was there last year. Had the opportunity to be there for the first time. Thank you. Beautiful country. I hope to spend more time there once we're out of the COVID. But yes, we do -- we can consider doing virtual training. We're also looking at -- we have some training that's available in virtual reality. Actually, VR. So we're working on how we can train operators to maintain the vehicle and doing any troubleshooting that way. And then with the advent last year, we introduced the Iver in a box or our Iver simulator, which really allows us to execute missions in a synthetic world. It's actually a 3D space. You get to see the vehicle actually drive around, it's a gaming engine. So that really helps out on that training. Our preferred way is certainly face-to-face. You learn an awful lot more. But I think in this new space of COVID, we're going to have to learn to do things new ways, like we're doing this webinar. This is not our first preference -- our preferred way either. We'd prefer to be face-to-face. I know Mark and I usually -- used to spend the most of our time trying to get in the front of our customers and our operators. And that's been difficult to get that feedback. I guess the short answer is we'll absolutely be pulling the thread on doing virtual training when necessary. So we're not against it, and we'll see how we can work within those constraints.

Great. Continuing with the international customers. This question is from [ Giovanni ] as well as a couple of other international partners. It's a twofold question. One, "Are the Iver products available in Europe and worldwide?" And secondly, "Are there ITAR restrictions on the Iver4 580?"

So the Iver4 580 and the Iver4 900 as normally configured are not ITAR restricted. So they can ship worldwide. There are countries that need to have licenses, and that's a pretty easy going process. We register with the State Department. They just want to know where they're going. But it's not ITAR restricted. Our vehicles do carry some payloads that are ITAR restricted. And when they are carrying those payloads, obviously, become ITAR restricted. But by default, the Iver4 900 and the Iver4 580 do not -- are not ITAR restricted and are available worldwide.

Thank you. This is from a government customer. He wants to know and would ask us to describe are shore and bottom avoidance and contact avoidance capability for the Iver4 family of vehicles.

Yes. So shore avoidance, absolutely. We pride ourselves on our shore avoidance work. We've been doing it. It's really the area of hard knocks, right? You get exposed. We've been -- our vehicles have been exposed around the world on all shoreline conditions, whether they're steep or shallow or you can imagine shoaling that can trick vehicles to not -- to want to turn around before they should be. So we've always pushed the envelope on that shore avoidance, driving deeper and deeper into the shoreline. So that's available on Iver4, Iver3, Iver4 580 and 900. We use DVLs and forward object avoidance. We do have a single beam forward object avoidance sensor. It was a pencil beam on the Iver4 900 -- sorry, Iver4 580. On the 900, on the larger vehicle, we actually support a forward multi-beam for object avoidance.

Great. Another question from a government customer. "Please describe the RF and undersea communications available in an Iver4 and also describe in more detail your ability to integrate an open architecture for payload and sensors."

Going to take the second part of that question, I think, first, Mark, and then follow back up. I'll probably forget the first part of the question, but that's all right. So from an open architecture standpoint, the whole Iver family has always, for the last 15 years -- again, we're very proud about the fact that we've set the bar in open architecture. We are popular within universities and [ NUC ] labs because we do -- we have a very rich API where you can develop behaviors. And the behaviors can be as simple as a -- asking the vehicle, hey, what is our latitude and longitude so that they can store that information in support of a payload that we might be carrying that we don't actually know we're carrying. So that's the kind of the lowest level payload capability. At the lowest or highest level of payload capability, you can actually take control of the fins and ask the fins to turn or angle. You could actually try -- you could actually do your own behaviors in spirals and barrel rolls or whatever. So we opened it up. It is bound by certain conditions. We have kind of oversight to make sure that the vehicle is not going to be put in harm's away. Doesn't go too deep. Doesn't go too long. Doesn't go beyond a timer. It's like similar things that you might find in air drones and support, but it's an open source. Again, well documented API to do all those behaviors and sensor integration. And as I predicted, Mark, I've forgotten what the first part of the question was.

It was communication system, both RF and undersea.

Yes. So we are -- we carry several different communication systems both subsea and surface. I'll just point out on the surface. By default, we have iridium. It can be either white listed or commercial iridium communications. And that's what this bulb is on the top of the antenna here. This is a shared iridium and GPS receiver. Inside of the antenna here, which is just fairly proud of the water. We have what we -- Wi-Fi. If it's turned on, it can be disabled for those types of conditions. And then we have long -- what we consider a long-range radio, which gets us about 300 to 350 meters depending on height of water -- height over water -- height off of water, excuse me, on the receiving end. And that's for communications. It's the one that you saw Tim working with, with the handheld controller. We do carry other radio packages as well on both the Iver3 and Iver4 for extended surface communications or military grade ACOMMS. Those communication systems have the ability to all be encrypted as well. We're rolling that out in the next month or 2. We're just doing our internal testing with the field team right now to make sure that, that's working. From a subsea communication standpoint, this vehicle right now is carrying a small transducer on the back here that can be used for both homing and communications. And that's -- that gets 1,000 meters of range. On the Iver4 900, we carry a slightly different model, and we get about 3 kilometers of range with that by default. Still has that homing capability and both can be swapped out. So we can swap in whichever payload if there's a specific requirement. So we carry 6 different acoustic communication systems on the Iver product line.

Thanks, Daryl. I have another question from [ Joe Reck ], PMS 406. I'll take this one, and then I'll hand over to Daryl for the hard user. It's an easy way. But Joe asked, "Within the submarine community, there is a strong push for a common operating system for all UUVs within the family of systems. Is there a plan for the Iver4 to support mission planning and post-mission analysis within whatever ends up being common planning tools for Navy UUVs? For example, a plug for top side, et cetera." Like I said, I'll take a shot at this and turn it over to the expert. Joe, so the -- as you well know, we're adhering to the UMAA, the Unmanned Autonomy Architecture framework as well as adapting to the CCS, combat system interface for the submarine force. And PMS 425 has got that. What we've described a little earlier, and Daryl can dive into, is the open architecture allows us to pull in any mission planning tool, including top side, if that's what you choose, or what comes out of PMS 425 for mission planning as well as post-mission analysis. So we're working closely with submarine force. There's some ongoing competitions that we can't talk about today, but obviously, gearing up for those and working closely with your former teammates at UUVRON SUBPAC and SUBFOR to make sure that we're answering the mail on the mission planning as well as post-mission analysis. So over to Daryl, anything you'd like to expound upon?

I don't know, Mark. You did a really -- did a great job. You really nailed it. The open architecture of the vehicle really lends itself to allowing for whichever system wants to be used to mission program. We do have a mission planner. It's called VectorMAP, and it's constantly evolving, answering the mail for the questions on both our commercial side as well as our military side. But we're well aware of the Navy's interest in moving towards a common control system. Makes a lot of sense when you're trying to operate multiple vehicles, whether it's air, subsea or surface, and having that common platform. So we support that. We're involved at the community level to try to make sure we don't leave the functionality that we have built into the vehicle out of that as it evolves. I think it's going to take some time to evolve, and we're there to support that. In the meantime, we do have the commercial vehicle, and we will continue to develop our mission planner, as an example. But even back, we're agnostic. We've got a converter for coin as an example. So if you plan a mission in coin, you can convert it over to our mission planner and vice versa. So we're basically a coin converter. And we plan doing the same thing and supporting the community as those opportunities come up.

Thank you, Daryl. Here's from a teammate from Orca Maritime, Tony Rodgers. He asks, "Are there plans to relate the 580's navigation accuracy to IHO level surveys in the future as an alternative traditionally towed systems?"

This is what I love about this community. I think if I look at the attendee list, I could probably -- to know each one of you, and I miss interacting and having these types of conversations. Absolutely, Tony. And I know where that question is coming from. We are constantly driving towards that -- those opportunities, especially for our commercial and survey companies as well, frankly, fleet survey team and others on the Navy side that have those expectations as well. So yes, we're going to continue to drive. And frankly, with the help of folks like yourself to do that.

Great. This one is from another teammate, David Cunningham of iXblue. He asks a question about the homing and comms transceiver. "Does it or could it support positioning with a USBL?"

Yes. So that is all -- again, because of the Iver family, if it's carrying the proper payload, we can then take that -- the augmentation for position and feed it into the iXblue as an example, the C3, which is what is being carried in this vehicle, as I'm sure you know. So yes, we'll be taking in data and feeding it to any onboard systems to help the common filters or whatever it needs to better position.

Thank you. This is a question from a government attendee. She asked, "The handheld that Tim displayed, is that available on the other Iver models?"

Yes. And it's not a per Iver specific. So if you have a handheld, you can drive an Iver3, an Iver4 900 or 850 (sic) [ 580 ], and we actually allow multiple channels so that we can -- from one handheld, you could actually drive multiple vehicles in the same area. That's a new handheld for us. We've had a handheld almost since the beginning of time. I, for one, when we first came out with it, I thought that was -- that might be interesting. I might use it one time. And I can tell you from being in the field, it's one of those nice items to have to drive a vehicle. It has a GPS that's built into it. So you can actually drive the vehicle to you. If you can't see the vehicle, actually come to you. So a lot of cool features that are embedded in that new handheld. The new handheld is ruggedized and supports IP67 -- IP65 designed for IP67, but we qualified IP65, which is basically water pressure in all orientations extended. So it's really designed to be in the field. And it also supports a link feature where it links between the operator console and the vehicle to provide long-range radio communications with the vehicle.

Great. This is a question, looks like a satisfied Iver3 customer. She asks, "I like my Iver3. But can I send it back and get it upgraded to an Iver4?"

Yes. So I like the Iver3 as well, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. As most of you are on the line might recognize, we started out with the Iver1, which was a development vehicle. We moved to the Iver2. We shipped more than 200 Iver2s over the time. We discontinued the Iver2 about 3.5 or 4 years ago from being able to order it. And then starting last year, we actually offer -- we started offering a trade-in. So you could trade in your Iver 2, and we would pull the parts off of the Iver2, put it onto an Iver3, and that allowed our customers continue to take advantage of the platform as it expands new capabilities, higher resolution performance, navigation, so on and so forth. And then we do a lot of business with our Iver3s with the upgrades. So a customer may buy an Iver3 that doesn't have an INS. But because of the modularity of the platform allows us to bolt these capabilities on in the future. So if they can't afford it or they don't think they need it or their mission at the time didn't require it, they can buy it with a certain set of capabilities and then expand on it. We do -- we would do the same thing if the interest was to move from an Iver3 580 to an Iver4 580. We can harvest the sensors off of the Iver and put them into the new system at a much reduced cost over top of a brand-new vehicle.

Thank you. This is from an anonymous attendee. He asks, "Is it possible to run third-party applications?" You covered this a little bit earlier, but he even brings out more complex algorithms such as ATR, even [ vehicle ] control, which I think we draw the line at [ vehicle ] control. But how about things like processing ATR complex autonomy? Is that fully integratable?

It's fully integratable on all of our platforms. Depending on the required load, we can actually carry what we call a backseat computer or remote helm. And we -- that backseat computer can be a full multiprocessor system. The Iver4 actually carries a backseat computer that is at Jetson. Those of you, it's a GPU. So it's actually designed for things like ATR. And the primary CPU can power and turn that capability on and off, so we're not burning power all the time. So that's built into the system or can be built into the system. From a behavior standpoint, if you don't need, we can actually split some cores off and allow the main CPU to be dedicated. And that can run whatever operating system that the operator or the user might want. So we're agnostic. It can be Linux. It can be some sort of Unix. It could be a real-time operating system. And that allows us to be agnostic from that perspective. We then give that processor or remote cores access to the network. So it has access to all the streams of information that are coming in. A perfect example of why UMAA is going to be very compliant. But that's essentially what we've been doing for almost 15 years with our open architecture API. We feed that information in. The remote helm or remote capability can actually take control of the modem. It can actually take control of the fins, the prop. It has to play within certain bounding conditions, as I mentioned. Also, if you have -- if the remote system has a better understanding of where in the world the vehicle is, it can actually feed it the new latitude and longitude. So we really have opened up the aperture through that rich interface.

Thanks, Daryl. Our teammate at Orca Maritime, Tony Rodgers, has a follow-up question. He likes the towed magnetometer. I know he's seen it in action. What do you -- wants to know, "Are there other sensors like environmental or water quality sensors in the pipeline for similar towed configurations?"

So I'm glad you brought that up, Tony, because I didn't point out, there is a -- the Iver4 580, as many of you might know, the Iver3 had a connector up here near the mid-body of the vehicle that we would plug the tow cable into the feed power and communications back to whatever we were towing, such a magnetometer or acoustic array or, to your point, Tony, there is absolutely a pipeline that's being worked on right now for water quality. We're working with YSI water quality right now to carry their larger sonde and drag it behind us. And that way, we can have multiple parameters, add it when you need it. The Iver4 580, we moved that connector to the tail. So it's right here. So this is where we do our charging, and this is where we do our towing. So no longer do we have to pull the cable across the top, and this helps. As you might see on the Iver4, both the 900 and the 580, we've done a lot for hydrodynamics. It used to be -- when these vehicles used to be put in the water and go 4, 5, 6 hours, hydrodynamics are always important, but it's not as important. As our vehicles carry more sophisticated sensors, larger battery packs, new battery systems like Open Water Power and have endurances that are starting to knock on the 20 hours, 30 hours, 40, 50 hours, those small, subtle hydrodynamic impacts of the vehicle add up. It's like leaving the lightbulb turned on in your house all the time. It's constant drain. So we really pay attention to the streamlined body. We're always working on how to leverage that aspect. So that was a lot.

Yes. Thanks. This question is another anonymous attendee. It looks like commercial customer. "Does this vehicle have [ any emergency ] safety features beyond environmental constraints on depth, et cetera, like a Watchdog system to manage out-of-bounds system or environmental events?"

Yes. In fact, we did not talk about it. We try to keep the time fairly concise. But the Iver4 and the Iver3s, about 3 years ago, we introduced the Watchdog into an Iver3. We pulled the Iver -- when we first released the Iver4 900, the Watchdog became more capable and has access to even more information. So it's overarching, overreaching system that's constantly managing the system, and it has access to things like drop weights and communication systems and so on. So even if the main batteries go down or if we want to turn the main processor off to conserve power, that Watchdog system takes over. It's on a separate battery and so on. That same behavior then got rolled into the Iver4 580 as well. So that Watchdog is a more sophisticated Watchdog with very similar capabilities. So access to iridium, access to GPS, and it has overarching control over being able to shut different aspects on and off to the vehicle.

Okay. Thank you. Another one from Orca Marine. This one from Kurt Nelson. Maybe a little harder to answer, Daryl, because it's some ongoing efforts with the U.S. Navy. But regarding [ mind counter major missions ], "Are there plans to conduct acoustic and magnetic signature baseline measurements for future use in those mission sets?"

Yes. So I think the short answer is absolutely. It's an ongoing test. But even before -- even without the testing or even when we get through that testing, we are constantly pushing the envelope as to what we can do to modify to lower the signatures of the vehicle. And that's both acoustic as well as a radiated noise and EMI. So we use carbon fiber and titanium for load magnetics. The motor and some of those things, we actually have some innovative things going on in that arena. That's going to help drive that signature even lower. It's almost similar to cyber. I don't think the job will ever be done. We'll constantly push the envelope and constantly be trying to push that drive that far, lower and lower, just like the cybersecurity, trying to put the larger and larger walls up without impacting our operators, right? That's one of the challenges. It'd be easy to do this if you just want to lock everything up and have something that's not usable anymore, but we have to make sure that we're answering the mail to those operators that are out there doing the jobs that they do every day.

Thanks, Daryl. We're getting many questions pouring in here, and we'll do our best to follow up and answer these and certainly to reach out by phone and through our website. We have one final question, which we'll end with, and then I'll turn it over to Daryl to finish. But before I do that, I just want to thank everybody for the response today and the level of enthusiasm in your questions, the detail in those questions. It's clear that the audience is well informed and professional in this spectrum of warfare and commercial mission [ SAS ]. So thank you for your attentiveness, and appreciate the time out of your day-to-day. The final question is anonymous, and it's general. And I'll take a shot at it. And like I said I'll pass it over to Daryl to finish the question and conclude. "What's next in autonomy? In other words, what are you excited about at L3Harris and autonomy?" I think it's a great question to finish with because we are definitely excited about autonomy and automation at L3Harris. I mentioned the Unmanned Maritime Autonomy Architecture. We are joined at the hip with PMS 406 and the U.S. Navy on that, but we're also leveraging our commercial efforts, not only at ocean server in our Imperial Beach facilities but also down in Louisiana in our USV facility at Lafayette and in the U.K., our Portchester U.K. facility. Both Lafayette and Portchester build unmanned surface vehicles. We are -- we've been invited by the UMAA leadership -- government leadership, to be one of 2 industry partners for the Oversight Board to allow our expertise to have the industry perspective. So in autonomy, I think classically, autonomy has been about getting from point A to point B, whether that's undersea or on the surface. Now the customer, whether it's military or commercial, are demanding more autonomous behavior, mission behavior, machine learning, artificial intelligence. That is a focus at L3Harris. We think we're on the leading edge, and I think most of our team would say the bleeding edge because we are out there in front with our autonomous vehicles in the water with the war fighter, with our customer, again, shoulder to shoulder, looking at their mission requirements and trying to meet those with autonomous vehicles. So probably what's most exciting is -- in our unmanned undersea side is going to that next level of autonomy, of making decisions, of mission execution based upon environmental changes or changes in the operational environment, threats, environmental navigation hazards, and accomplishing that mission successfully, managing power and sensor operation. So that is -- it sounds straightforward, but those involved in unmanned know, especially undersea, we don't have remote pilot. We don't have call home features available other than if we're an extremist. And it really needs to be an unmanned vehicle, unalone and unafraid in operations. So with that, thank you very much for your time, and I'll turn it over to Daryl Slocum to conclude from his Imperial Beach facility. Thank you, and have a great day.

Yes. Thanks for that handover, Mark. I am going to pull the thread a little bit on the autonomy question. I've been doing UUV since the early '90s, and I thought we would be much further along. Back then, I used to call them AUV for an autonomous underwater vehicle. I've since stopped because I -- we are just scratching the surface today with some concepts in autonomy, similar to what we see on the car's ability to do autonomy. It's really hard. The -- when we leave the surface, we don't have access to GPS. Navigation is challenging, all those things that most of you on the line recognize. So that -- just like cyber I outlined and just like some of the other things, we expect autonomy to be one of the key pieces. When these vehicles were going out for 5 hours and you were right in the area with them, that was one thing. Maybe you needed some shore avoidance or object avoidance or whatever else. But when you're launching these vehicles from 15 nautical miles away or more, and it's coming into an unknown area, and it can't get -- it gets challenged by something that it didn't understand was going to be part of that environment, it needs to work through those difficult things. One of the things -- although we do have our own autonomy groups within L3Harris that are always pushing that envelope throughout the entire group that's both at the surface and the air and the sea, we'll also leave that opening because we expect other groups, the [ NUCs ] and other groups that are working on autonomy, to develop their own algorithms. And that's one of the things that I'm very proud of, and I know the rest of the team is. Back in the day, you used to have to make a UUV, and then you spent very little time making the autonomy part. A lot of people don't want to make the UUV. They want to make the autonomy part. Well, the Iver platform is such an open source, open architecture, multi-payload modular system. It allows our customers that are interested in autonomy to be focused on autonomy and not the vehicle itself, and I think that's an important thing that we need to do as a community to try to drive the envelope because this is -- let's face it, it's not going to be solved by any one individual or any one group. We're going to want to exercise and use the best of all of those coming together on that common interface. So great question, like you said, Mark, to finish off with. We're going a few minutes over, so I'm going to -- it looks like we're out of time for today. It has been a real pleasure getting to share this Iver4 580 with all of you. I look forward to the future interactions, and perhaps it'll be in person next time. Certainly my preference. The hardest thing for me during this webinar is not hearing -- not being able to interact. Specifically, I love the questions. So I do look for to that opportunity to be specifically in front of -- when some of these things are lifted. So I invite you to reach out to the Iver sales team with any additional questions, a follow-up through the webinar. You can reach us at (508) 678-0550. I sound like a telecom person but -- or [email protected]. Thank you, and have a great day.