Navy helps open Seattle lab that aims to ignite a ‘Silicon Valley’ for national security
SEATTLE – The use of radio waves to locate a target, a technology long known as radar, has often required bulky equipment throughout its history.
No longer. Over the past decade, Echodyne, a 90-employee company in Kirkland, has reduced radar to the size of a cell phone, a breakthrough that has opened up new possibilities. Its compact radar can, for example, easily ride on a small drone.
“With our ability to overcome this (size) barrier, you can open up more applications for radar,” said Leo McCloskey, vice president of marketing for the company.
US MP Rick Larsen, D-Everett, cuts a ribbon along with other executives who helped develop the new innovation lab in Seattle. The laboratory includes a direct link to the various departments of the military.
One of the company’s customers was the government. The Department of Homeland Security, through its Customs and Border Protection Innovation Team, is paying $ 20 million to test a ground-based radar that can monitor strips of border areas.
However, Echodyne’s successful treaty is proving to be a rarity here in matchmaking that Navy and Defense Department leaders hope to change. They believe that not enough Pacific Northwest startups like Echodyne are realizing when their leap in technology could be useful for the Pentagon and national security.
Defense leaders and their supporters hope to change this on the 33rd floor of a Seattle office building.
The view of South Seattle from the 33rd floor of the DocuSign Tower.
There, in the DocuSign Tower, spacious, salmon-named fishbowl conference rooms and computer labs with inspirational quotes aim to bring together businesses, academics, and the military to promote great technological ideas.
The so-called Mission Acceleration Center is supposed to solve this problem: Companies do not always know what possibilities of defense financing exist and how they can achieve them. Conversely, the military is not always aware of new technologies.
“This is supposed to be the one-stop shop that creates this access point,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Johannes Schonberg, the director of the Navy’s Northwest Tech Bridge, stationed at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport.
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When the center opened, Schonberg stated that there are “no guarantees” on money, but “it’s about building relationships and connecting with the right organizations”.
“How do we get venture capital talking to the military?”
In total, Washington state received $ 17.8 billion in Department of Defense spending in 2019, the latest data available, an amount that makes it the eighth highest state in the country.
Of this, around $ 11.2 billion went to contracts, the majority of which went to Boeing at $ 7.8 billion. Military leaders hope the Accelerator Center can open the door to smaller tech companies who may not be familiar with the federal government’s procurement process.
Denise Ryser, director of market development for the Pacific Northwest Defense Coalition, told the Puget Sound Business Journal the Northwest is “under-indebted” and the $ 11.2 billion total should be higher “because the talent is here.”
The Mission Acceleration Center “seeks to harness the same kind of energy that built Silicon Valley,” said Justin Dunnicliff, University of Washington program director for the Department of Defense’s National Security Innovation Network.
The center is funded by the Innovation Network and the Office of Naval Research with a budget of approximately $ 2 million per year.
The approximately 4,000 square meter work laboratory, which was launched in 2018 as Create33 as a co-working space, was closed due to the uncertainty of the pandemic. But his rebirth, with help from the military and Impact Washington, a nonprofit that supports the state’s manufacturing sector, secures a rent-paying tenant of $ 500,000 a year.
Under the conference and computer rooms of the new Mission Acceleration Center in Seattle.
A key question was, “How do we get venture capital in talks with the military?” according to Michael McNutt, a consultant who works for Impact Washington.
And now, when it comes to the next big idea in national security innovation, venture capitalists are just a flight of stairs away. The lab leads directly to the 34th floor of the offices of Madrona Venture Group, a long-standing Seattle-based private equity firm that has been investing in startups for more than 25 years.
“Government agencies as well as commercial companies can benefit from the incredible technical innovations developed by startups in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest,” said Scott Jacobson, managing director of Madrona Venture Group. It is great to have the Mission Acceleration Center in Seattle to promote these companies and technologies to defense and other government agencies as well as to help companies sell successfully to these organizations. “
Schoenberg von der Marine, a resident of Manette who ran for Bremerton City Council this year, is part of “NavalX”, a new NavalX initiative that aims to bring problem solvers together within the “naval culture of decentralized autonomy” and primarily each other about “sustainment” – how the Navy can keep its fleet safe at sea for long periods of time. But with the Seattle Mission Acceleration Center, Schoenberg and the Northwestern Tech Bridge have formed a connective tissue with all the military orders of the Northwest into one Put space in which to meet with academic researchers, investors and start-up companies.
“We need to be present on both sides of the water,” he said. “No site can cover everything we need.”
Josh Farley is a reporter who covers the military and Bremerton for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-9227, [email protected], or on Twitter at @joshfarley.
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: New Lab Aimed to Ignite a “Silicon Valley” for National Security