Press & Media

Senator Blumenthal Visits ThayerMahan to Discuss Augmenting Navy with Persistent Unmanned Acoustic Surveillance Solutions

Groton, Connecticut (25 March 2025) - Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) visited ThayerMahan, a leading maritime technology company on Thursday, March 20 to engage with senior leadership regarding the critical issues of undersea security and surveillance. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Navy Caucus, and Coast Guard Caucus, Senator Blumenthal understands the importance for America's armed forces to maintain the advantage in Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). 

The Senator's visit comes at a crucial time as growing global threats spanning from Russian naval activity near U.S. shores to rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait drive demand for enhanced maritime surveillance. With ongoing challenges in expanding the Navy's attack submarine (SSN) fleet, unmanned autonomous systems such as ThayerMahan's Outpost and SeaPicket platforms provide cost-effective, rapidly deployable solutions to bridge surveillance gaps. 

Speaking on the use of Outpost and SeaPicket alongside traditional assets, Senator Blumenthal stated: 

“What we are seeing here is the future of our Navy. Undersea warfare is going to make use of unmanned vehicles that can go places our submarine force can't reach, and complement their critical work. It makes sense to invest in Outpost to meet the growing challenges of undersea warfare and ensure a strong national defense.” 

The Senator toured ThayerMahan's Outpost and SeaPicket acoustic surveillance solutions, and visited the onsite operations center where he viewed the real-time receipt and classification of data from on-mission systems. At a time when ongoing supply chain challenges continue to hinder production on traditional capital assets, ThayerMahan's Outpost system provides a low-cost, scalable solution to augment capability and close the surveillance gap.  

ThayerMahan COO and retired Submarine Squadron Commander John Russ stated: 

“Our objective in founding ThayerMahan was to do what we can to augment wide-area undersea surveillance to support our Navy's exquisite and incredibly capable undersea warfare platforms and enable their operational commanders to employ them more effectively.  Outpost is a low cost, scalable maritime surveillance platform that is ready now to deploy in support of the Navy's high-priority undersea warfare mission.” 

Outpost® is an autonomous, mobile long-dwell system that meets top level Navy requirements for Deep Water Passive Surveillance. With production based in southeastern Connecticut, ThayerMahan has drawn top talent to the region. ThayerMahan has committed to meet growing surveillance needs, with plans to double manufacturing floor capacity and fill over fifty new high-skilled jobs in 2025. With insourced capabilities, ThayerMahan can produce a minimum of 100 unmanned autonomous systems and have them in service within two years, within the crucial time window.