Five Questions With: Vittorio Ricci

"Certainly, we are looking at new technologies to improve the performance or reduce the cost of our submarines and surface ships."

Vittorio Ricci has been named the new chief technology officer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport. The Narragansett resident has served in a variety of leadership positions during his 30 years at NUWC Newport. Ricci talks about his new position and experience in the industry with Providence Business News.

PBN: What do you hope to bring to this position?
RICCI:
I hope to bring my optimism, energy and enthusiasm. We have an extremely talented workforce capable of developing technical solutions to address complex challenges. I have spent much of my career interacting with the warfighters, who are the end users of our technologies. I hope to help focus our research and provide the necessary connectivity between our scientists and engineers and those warfighters in the numbered fleets and combatant commands to ensure that we are developing solutions to real problems that they will find relevant and practical. I believe that we can provide the technology to meet the current and future needs of our military, especially in the undersea domain. From a science and technology perspective, I hope to instill in our scientists and engineers, as well as our industry partners, pride in their contributions to our National Security. Moreover, I’d like them to feel a sense of excitement that comes from seeing their products being used by the warfighters and the satisfaction of knowing that we did our job so the warfighters could do theirs.

PBN: What brought you to the NUWC initially?
RICCI:
In 1984, I had just graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering, so I had been looking at companies like Sikorsky and United Technologies. A friend suggested I also look at the Naval Underwater Systems Center (NUSC) in Newport. Applying my aerospace engineering education to Undersea Warfare appeared unlikely at the time, but I interviewed with a few of the departments. One really caught my attention. It turned out that they were integrating the Tomahawk cruise missile into submarines. Tomahawk was a cutting edge, state-of-the-art system at the time, and I was being offered a job testing it. It sounded really cool and like it would be a lot of fun… and it was!

PBN: What are some of the center’s new science and technology initiatives?
RICCI:
Certainly, we are looking at new technologies to improve the performance or reduce the cost of our submarines and surface ships. And, of course, there are new ship initiatives like Ohio Replacement Program and Littoral Combat Ship which are opportunities to look at new technologies and new capabilities. Efforts are underway to improve information management, processing and display to aid the combat system operators. We are working on new sensor array technologies as well as seeking to improve the maintainability and reliability of our existing systems. We have also engaged in new initiatives to improve our fleet torpedoes. As we look to the future, we are also looking to extend the performance our systems and develop new capabilities through the use of offboard, unmanned and distributed systems. For example, unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) have been a major focus for us for over two decades (a lot more if you count torpedoes as an unmanned vehicle). So we’re conducting research and development in the component technologies such as power (batteries, fuel cells, etc.), autonomy, low-power sensors and navigation which will enable a useful operational UUV capability for our warfighters.

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PBN: Can you give us some idea of the scope of work being done at the NUWC?
RICCI:
We conduct basic and applied research to support our primary product areas of sonar and signal processing, combat systems, antennas and periscopes, launcher systems, weapons and unmanned vehicles and torpedo defensive systems. We conduct Warfare Analysis to support the Navy in identifying Mission requirements and priorities. We also develop and maintain a broad spectrum of test facilities and Navy Ranges to support development and system Verification and Validation. We are a full spectrum Warfare Center. Along with research and development we provide acquisition and in-service support for our product areas, in some cases, up to and including disposal. At any given moment our engineers and scientists are all over the world conducting testing to support technology development and acquisition or supporting in-service system operation. Although we are committed to ensuring U.S. superiority in undersea warfare we work with a variety of customers including the Department of Homeland Defense, the Department of Energy, the Air Force and others to ensure that technology is multi-purposed to maximize its value to our country. I like to say that sometimes we’re not just a Navy lab, we’re a national lab!

PBN: What is the role of Industry in support of NUWC’s mission with respect to science and technology?
RICCI:
The role of industry in support of NUWC’s science and technology is as diverse as NUWC’s mission. We depend on local industry to augment our workforce with respect to existing and emerging technologies and knowledge areas. We look to industry SBIRs (Small Business Innovation Research program) among other initiatives to hunt for technical solutions and products to support our acquisition and in-service duties. We are always seeking to collaborate with industry to maximize the value of our support to the Navy and to avoid redundancy with their work. As we move forward, I hope to engage traditional industry partners and also reach out to those companies that don’t traditionally work in undersea domain or even in the defense sector. It is core to our organizational strategy that we emphasize the optimum coordination of government and industry participation to provide best value to the Navy and the country.

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