“This APFIT award is an important step in our mission of bringing the Navy persistent 24/7 undersea information, covering areas that are presently largely unmonitored,” said Dr. Yi Chao, CEO and Founder of Seatrec. “With this APFIT support, we’re delivering PSAP systems immediately to warfighters to meet their requirements and fill critical gaps in maritime domain awareness.”
The PSAP is based on Seatrec’s commercial product—the infiniTE™ float. PSAP is the first subsea drone powered by the energy harvested from temperature gradients in the ocean. Power-demanding sensors, such as passive acoustic hydrophones for soundscape monitoring and active acoustic echosounders for seafloor mapping, can now be integrated on the PSAP platform with essentially unlimited endurance. PSAP systems are attritable and can be deployed at scale.
After a successful pilot demonstration in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), the PSAP earned support from the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC). This APFIT award will allow Seatrec to deliver PSAP systems with the required sensors and payloads to warfighters as early as the last quarter of 2026.
“Accelerating innovative technologies that support our persistent undersea situational awareness—and delivering them into the hands of warfighters quickly—enhances the joint force’s ability to ensure our national security,” explained Dr. Jason McKenna, the Chief Technology Officer at CNMOC. “The ability to quickly transition groundbreaking technology like Seatrec’s PSAP to scalable production shows the impact of the APFIT program.”
The APFIT program, established in Fiscal Year 2022 by Congress within the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research & Engineering (OUSW(R&E)), is designed to transition mature, mission-ready technologies that fill joint warfighting capability gaps into production and fielding at scale.
The APFIT award allows Seatrec to immediately begin low-rate initial production (LRIP) of PSAPs in Seatrec’s existing California facility. Additionally, Seatrec plans to expand capacity with a full-rate production (FRP) facility in Mississippi to meet the Department’s future demand.
“PSAP is a good example of what we’re trying to build across the Department: get a validated prototype through experimentation fast, then hand it to a program like APFIT that can scale it into the fleet without losing years to the old requirements process,” said Dr. An (Mike) Tran, Director of Prototyping, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Prototyping and Experimentation within the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering.”
“This is exactly what our Prototyping and Experimentation mission is built to do,” Dr. Tran said. “And exactly the kind of company the Department’s Mission Engineering Integration Activity (MEIA) work is built to find: a small, innovative business with a real capability. We rely on industry like Seatrec to bring us solutions we would not generate ourselves, and we leverage our Tier 1 (Technology Validation) events like Technology Readiness Experimentations (T-REX) to pressure-test them with the Services before we ever ask for production dollars. PSAP earned its way to APFIT. That is the model we want more small businesses to follow.”
The APFIT 26-2 awardees and program updates are posted on the Department of War’s news releases website. APFIT program details are available on the Department of War’s APFIT website.
