Five Questions With: Timothy Straw

Timothy Straw, a Naval Undersea Warfare Center engineer, has been named a winner of this year’s National Defense Industrial Association Bronze Medal. The medal is an annual award that recognizes outstanding individual achievements in science or engineering in the field of undersea warfare. He has 41 years of experience at NUWC that has focused on the development of and in-service support for hull-mounted and deployed sonar transducers and arrays.
He will be presented with the medal during the National Defense Industrial Association Undersea Warfare Division Fall meeting Sept. 22-24 in Groton, Conn.

Straw spoke with Providence Business News about receiving the award.

PBN: You’re being honored with a National Defense Industrial Association Bronze Medal for individual effort in a decidedly group enterprise, the U.S. Navy. What have you or your team done that deserves this kind of recognition?
STRAW:
Throughout much of my career I’ve been privileged with being able to work with intelligent, dedicated staff members with similar interests – identifying difficult but important technical challenges and addressing those challenges. Although I’ve frequently provided insight and innovative ideas, it’s been my mentoring of technical teams that has created the synergy to produce important advances in undersea technology. Many of our improvements are installed on submarines and surface ships and are being built into new construction platforms to increase undersea warfare capability.

PBN: You’ve been at NUWC for 41 years. Did you serve in the Navy? If not, what brought you to Newport and the opportunity to work on underwater electronics?
STRAW:
I graduated college in 1973 and went right to work for the U.S. Navy as a civilian. During my senior year at URI, I attended a federal careers day at URI which included recruiters from the Naval Underwater Systems Center in New London, Conn. I interviewed there and accepted a job with an electronics development group. When the BRAC commission closed the New London Lab in 1996 my job was transferred to Newport. I moved to Narragansett and I’ve worked at Newport ever since.

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PBN: What does a hull-mounted or deployed sonar do? How many of the Navy’s vessels have use for them?
STRAW:
Underwater sonar systems are used by the U.S. Navy for a variety of purposes, included navigation, collision and mine avoidance, acoustic surveillance and, in particular, anti-submarine warfare. As far as I know, all commissioned U.S. Navy vessels and probably all support vessels have at least some kind of hull mounted sonar. Deployed sonar systems are used in underwater acoustic ranges, and as temporary or permanent listening stations.

PBN: Are there any civilian uses for the work you do? Has there been any technology transfer into private industry that might turn what you and your team have done into technology that more people can use?
STRAW:
Most civilian boats employ a simple active sonar system which measures the propagation time for an acoustic ‘ping’ to travel from the boat to the bottom and reflect back to the boat. This time delay is then converted to depth below keel using the speed of sound in water. Fishing boats use a similar type of sonar to hunt down schools of fish. An important application is geophysical exploration where very large, multi-line towed sonar arrays are used in conjunction with acoustic sources to perform sub-sea geological profiling in the search for oil and gas. Most of our patents are available in the public domain – five of my patents have been licensed for commercial use and a sixth is being considered.

PBN: While you are employed by the U.S. Navy, the technology you research and develop is put into practice by private industry. Do you find that some contractors do a better job of understanding what the Navy needs? If so (or if not), why is that the case?
STRAW:
Most defense contractors that I work with in the underwater sensing area have knowledgeable staff or team members that are capable of understanding the technology we’ve developed. Each company is different – some have a definite ‘not invented here’ mentality and are reluctant to accept the work of others, others are definitely willing to work with us to transition government technology into defense products, and it is those that I believe best benefit the U.S. Navy.

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