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Most of our products originated as custom designs. Yet, we avoid obsolescence and product stagnation by transitioning custom products into off-the-shelf production status. More customers means more funds for ongoing development, and indeed many projects have progressed far beyond their custom origin. The result is ‘free’ improvements for the initial customer, and a leveraging of value for Desert Star.

Underwater tracking ranges are an essential tool for weapons system evaluation and military training. Yet, these systems were expensive, fixed installations. In part in response to the then planned closure of the underwater tracking facilities at the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques, the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City commissioned the design of a portable tracking range. Desert Star was awarded the contract, and in January 2007 the system underwent acceptance testing in Panama City. The results were remarkable: Almost 250 acres of underwater terrain in St. Andrews Bay were instrumented in just 4 hours; and when a shrimp boat dragged bottom trawl gear over the array during the first night, quickly organized underwater intervention fixed the minor damage on the next day. After testing was completed within a few days, enough time remained for unscheduled tracking of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and the cabled tracking range was recovered on the afternoon of the same day. In the weeks since, data analysis proved an accuracy and data availability well above the Navy’s acceptance standard. The impact for the Navy is significant: RangeNav™ will enable test operations at any desired site. The operational simplicity of RangeNav™ will also support civilian and smaller military operations. Use for environmental clean-up of underwater site is already under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Recognizing the need for better photo intelligence collection, the U.S. Special Operations Command awarded contracts for the development of amphibious digital cameras and related image processing and transmission equipment in 1999. Three contractors were chosen for camera design, including a large camera manufacturer and Desert Star Systems. By 2004, after intensive field testing that included one month in Ethiopia, Desert Star Systems became the only vendor to deliver a working equipment set. SOCOM asked Desert Star to ‘think out of the box’, and indeed the FrogEye™ equipment set contains unique innovations such as the free-flooded lens (picture), which enables long-distance observations by divers. Development continued on a private basis and by 2006 the FC-2 product had been introduced, adopted by several countries and saw use in Afghanistan and Iraq among other locations. NATO stock numbers have since been assigned for the equipment. Meanwhile, Desert Star continues developments that are expanding the system into a full photo reconnaissance system, including capabilities to transmit imagery by both wired and wireless means. The increasingly refined FrogEye™ program demonstrates the value of Desert Star’s strong emphasis on field testing, and the very practical solutions this approach continues to yield.

The Lockheed Martin Corporation is one of Desert Star System’s frequent customers. Lockheed Martin already used Desert Star’s underwater positioning and camera systems when the company inquired if Desert Star could produce a very small pressure sensor with a digital output. While Desert Star had not built pressure sensors before, we proposed a design that minimized component count while simultaneously producing very high accuracy. Today, the SSP-1 is used in Lockheed’s product, but also by many other customers. Even though the SSP-1 was in a new field of technology for our company, the design still benefited from the contents of our design library. Existing design blocks were combined with a key new idea to complete the SSP-1 project successfully within a few months.

2002: Desert Star Technology: Built Not Only by Desert Star

Desert Star Systems technology is manufactured and sold by Desert Star, but is also available to other manufacturers who can benefit from the capabilities to enhance their own products. In 2002 Desert Star Systems started a partnership with VideoRay, the highest volume manufacturer of underwater robots (ROV). VideoRay is now licensed to manufacture Desert Star System’s underwater positioning systems for use in their products, and indeed the agreement has proved very beneficial for both companies. Most significant may be VideoRay’s use of the AquaMap ShipHull technology for in-water hull inspections. The capability has propelled VideoRay to become the de-facto standard for security inspections of vessels by ROV and produced several volume sales to customers including the U.S. Coast Guard.

In 1998, Battelle Memorial Institute, the under contract to the U.S. Navy EOD/LIC program determined that Desert Star Systems had the closest technology match to build a positioning system for in-water ship-hull inspections. By the next year, the HANS system was tested and received a R&D 100 award. While in fact HANS was still a complicated prototype, key new technologies had been tested that would allow a positioning system to operate reliably despite the acoustic shadowing caused by the hull. Seeing the potential, Desert Star continued development when the HANS program ended in 2001, and by early 2002 the new AquaMap ShipHull system was introduced. AquaMap ShipHull proved both highly efficient and accurate. The system can be set-up and calibrated in minutes, and produces sub-meter accuracy positions anywhere along a hull. AquaMap ShipHull performance was officially verified at the U.S. Navy’s HULSFEST technology evaluation in 2006, and today the system is seeing widespread use.

When the Japanese cargo submarine I-52 was sunk by a U.S. Carrier Task Force in 1944 while on its way to Germany, it’s manifest showed the cargo included two tons of gold. In 1995, Paul Tidwell of Cape Verde Explorations had located the wreck, and now Paul had organized a new expedition to thoroughly inspect the wreck site. The Russian MIR deep ocean submersibles were hired for the task, and Cape Verde Explorations contracted Desert Star Systems to provide a AquaMap precision survey system along with on-site support. A total of 14 MIR dives were conducted at the mid-Atlantic wreck site, at a depth of over 5200 meters. Desert Star’s CEO Marco Flagg served as navigator on three of the dives, while other personnel including a teenage student named August Zajonc operated the system on other dives. In the end, AquaMap™ data proved that the wreck site had been thoroughly searched, yet no gold was located. Still, the memories of this visit to the deep ocean grave site and the respect for the lost sailors and the American fliers fighting the war remains with all of us. As of 2005, Paul Tidwell still planned to execute an expedition to raise the I-52 and we will be glad to assist. Stay tuned.

Desert Star’s business started with a simple idea:  When future CEO Marco Flagg signed up for SCUBA classes in 1998, he was too absorbed with the discovery of the underwater environment to pay much heed to the whereabouts of his dive buddy.  After being scolded by the dive instructor for loosing sight of his buddy, Marco decided there had to be a better way to track errant buddies.  So was born the concept of the ‘buddy finder’: a transmitter that you could place on your buddy and a receiver to quickly find him/her when needed.  Of course, with Marco being an engineer, merely finding a buddy soon became too trivial a task. Before long the product was eclipsed by the more sophisticated AquaMap™ system that was to become the company’s first product.  Nevertheless, divers kept nagging and the young Desert Star company soon decided to turn the buddy finder into it’s second commercial product.  Today, DiveTracker™ Sport and Scout are widely used by sport divers, who use them primarily to find their way back to the boat (never mind the buddy).  But the technology is no toy.  Many military, scientific and commercial users have recognized the potential.  In 2006, the U.S. Marine Corps placed an order for 160 of the devices. 

The casual observer might imagine that deep water operations are difficult, and shallow water is easy.  In fact, at least for acoustic system, the opposite is true.   Shallow waters are rich in reverberations, with sound bouncing of many surfaces.  Sound is refracted away as it travels through unevenly composed water, and a variety of man’s machines and natures organisms produces a cacophony of noise that would make a heavy metal band blush.  But, as attention turned to the littoral or near-shore environment, dealing with such challenges became a new focus of many organizations.  Among them, NOAA was looking for a capability to track science divers at the Aquarius underwater habitat in Key Largo, Florida.  Desert Star had developed and tested shallow water concepts for a few years already and we were awarded a SBIR contract (Small Business Innovative Research) that became our first big job.  In fact, the resulting AquaMap system not only managed to perform well in these conditions, but also achieved remarkable accuracy well below one meter and offered functions such as electronic observation recording.  While use at Aquarius ultimately proved short-lived, the system had gotten its start and by the next spring Envirotech of Seattle had purchased a system for mapping fish waste deposits at the outflows of pipelines from fish processing plants.  Marco Flagg joined Tim Jewel of Envirotech at Dutch Harbor in the Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.  Day after day, dives were conducted and the software was tweaked in the ramshackle hut that also served as the team’s living quarters.  Conditions were tough at times. On one occasion Tim Jewel, in a flooded dry suit, swam to the beach and then walked back to the hut, miserably shivering all the while operations proceeded at sea.  Marco Flagg got his share of diving too, experiencing first hand the coordination of scooter operation, running track patterns and poking holes into the waste pile to measure its depth and record that depth electronically.  After a week of intense operations, the software had been refined and become a key component of EnviroTech’s mapping operations. 




Today, Desert Star continues to sell the diver based version of AquaMap™, which is used for much significant work.  Among the most intensive operators is Jeff Miller of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has developed a formal protocol and used AquaMap for years to monitor coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  His long-term studies identified a significant and widely reported episode of coral bleaching in 2005.  In 2006, Jeff Miller received an award from the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force for Outstanding Scientific Advancement of Knowledge.  

The Story Behind The Desert Star Name

“The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above”
(Horse without a Name by America)

Desert Star Systems, Desert Storm Systems, Death Star Systems.  This is our company’s name and some of the more common distortions that we encounter. To be sure, people are frequently surprised that we are located in Monterey Bay and Rhode Island rather than say Phoenix or Las Vegas.  Invoking the desert in the name of a company so well known for its ocean products also seems a paradox.

In reality, our company got it’s name when the first idea of ‘North Star Systems’ to describe our navigation products was quickly determined to be well used, and ‘Ocean Star’ was already claimed by a cruise line.  The name ‘Desert Star’ came to mind quickly, as several of Desert Star’s founders long enjoyed exploring and are still often to be found blazing down some dirt roads in Nevada or Arizona or Baja California with SCUBA gear in the truck just in case a dive opportunity should arise.

We think that just like in the song Horse Without a Name, there are great similarities between the wide open expanses of the desert and the ocean. 

 We also feel that the name well describes our company’s spirit as a very capable, yet also free-thinking and light-hearted company; and our focus on products that might be encountered wherever the endeavors of war, science and exploration are so often performed:  In the remote regions of the world, from the deep seas to outer space and the deserts to the mountains and jungles.