Photo By Chief Petty Officer Lisa Ferdinando | Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC EXWC) engineer...... read more read more
It is not often the United States Navy builds a ship around your technology program and recognizes you as the best of the best, but for Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center (NAVFAC EXWC) engineer Vikram Pandurangan these are the remarkable realities of his job supporting the Fleet and warfighter.
Pandurangan, an engineering project manager for marine handling systems in the Oceans Technical Department, is leading a team to advance and perfect a new Navy Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) handling system prototype for an upcoming line of ships.
The project involves the creation of several extremely complex mechanical designs to deploy and retrieve towed cables in highly variable sea states for anti-submarine sonar arrays extending hundreds of feet into the water and weighing thousands of pounds.
Pandurangan personally designed and oversaw associated design efforts, tracked and directed progress and continuously provided in-service engineering support.
For his exceptional achievements, the Navy honored Pandurangan with a 2025 Dr. Delores M. Etter Award for Individual Engineer, an extraordinary honor that recognizes the immense technical challenges of a project of this magnitude, and its critical role in supporting the Fleet and warfighter.
Named after Dr. Delores M. Etter, a former United States Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology, the awards are presented each year by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition (ASN RD&A) to recognize the top scientists and engineers from the tens of thousands working within the Department of the Navy.
These awards represent the “pinnacle of scientific and engineering excellence within the Department of the Navy, recognizing accomplishments that are technically outstanding and profoundly beneficial to our operational capabilities and national defense,” said the host of the June 25 virtual ceremony, acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Dr. Brett Seidle.
“When you consider that nearly 55,000 Navy scientists and engineers are eligible for this award each year, the significance of this honor truly comes into focus,” he said.
NAVFAC EXWC and its predecessor agencies have supported the SURTASS legacy program for more than 25 years. The Navy is seeking to modernize and streamline the delivery of SURTASS and is building ships to accommodate the new technology.
Operated by the Military Sea Lift Command, the Explorer-class T-AGOS ships will play an integral role in the Navy’s anti-submarine warfare operations.
SURTASS is a low-frequency array of hydrophones deployed from surface surveillance ships to receive acoustic data. Using SURTASS enables the Navy to detect quiet, nuclear- and diesel-powered submarines and report real-time surveillance information to Navy commanders.
“The first ship (T-AGOS 25) is in co-production with this cable handling system, with up to 10 more ships to follow. The SURTASS mission has direct Fleet impacts by protecting the sailing men and women of the USN and USMC from all types of undersea threats,” the award citation reads.
Building a new system comes with intense and rigorous review and overcoming unforeseen complications. It requires advanced technical expertise, ingenuity and foresight, Pandurangan said. “It’s never been done before,” he noted.
“This project directly impacts the warfighter who’s actually touching the mission. One of the challenges is that you’re carrying a big ship full of sailors in rough and unpredictable sea states. The current system is extremely complex and dangerous to deploy. We wanted to make it simpler. We wanted to just deploy it via gravity,” he said.
A Los Angeles native with a civil engineering degree from the University of California, Irvine, and a systems engineering master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School, Pandurangan thrives in this environment.
“Overcoming challenges is part of the job.” he said. “It is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. I love that our work is going straight to the warfighter. It means that we’re doing something right, and we’re building something that is going to perform.”
Whether on a ship tossed around in the ocean during testing, working at headquarters, or in the laboratory devising intricate calculations and creating solutions to the prototype, Pandurangan is enjoying the journey.
“It’s been a fun mission, with a lot of prototyping, and a lot of testing. We built scale models of all sorts of sizes. We dragged them in pools. We dragged them in dive tanks. We built a 3D printed model to see what it would do in significant storms,” he said.
Working on complex and meaningful work is exactly why Pandurangan joined NAVFAC EXWC seven years ago.
“I wanted to be able to propel things forward and be a decision maker, as opposed to just getting work handed to me,” Pandurangan said. “I just want to build really cool things.”
Humbled and honored to receive the Dr. Etter Award, Pandurangan attributes the success to the dedicated NAVFAC EXWC professionals focused on the intricacies of the SURTASS prototype.
“My team deserves the credit. This group has probably been the most amazing group of individuals I have been around. They are brilliant. They love this work and what they do and that’s why we’ve been able to do what we’ve done so well.”
| Date Taken: | 07.02.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.02.2025 19:45 |
| Story ID: | 502205 |
| Location: | NAVAL BASE VENTURA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Hometown: | LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 58 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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