Visit Desert Star Systems and you will find a company infused with a passion for science and exploration, cutting edge engineering and quality manufacturing. It is a company where SCUBA classes are offered as a job benefit and a place where testing equipment in the rigors of Antarctica or joining a user for weeks of instrument deployment at sea are considered as essential as understanding the physics of the magnetosphere or knowledge and application of the latest programming environment.

Founded by Marco Flagg in 1992 on the idea of a “buddy finder” for SCUBA divers, our company soon won an SBIR award from NOAA to develop a precision diver tracking and communication capability for the agency’s Aquarius underwater laboratory in Key Largo, FL. This development with its challenging requirement for operation in shallow waters with high background noise levels and extensive reverberations became the basis of an entire line of underwater positioning and communication systems, that continues as a core competency and revenue generator of our company today.

The understanding that the development of effective technology for use in earth’s most extreme environments requires deep personal field expertise was essential to the subsequent development of the FrogEye amphibious camera for the U.S. Special Operations Command. Here, Desert Star’s design team competed against two manufacturers including Kodak. But based on innovations such as a free-flooded telephoto lens coupled with an electron multiplier CCD night vision that allows divers to image distant targets in brief surface intervals, Desert Star became the only team to introduce a production design. FrogEye has since been deployed by multiple allied militaries and is assigned NATO stock numbers (NSN).

Throughout its history, our company has emphasized hiring a skunk-works like crew, individuals with a variety of often unconventional backgrounds and individuals who might be overlooked in the regular course of hiring, but who come together here to be given the freedom to experiment and create products that are advanced yet tough and practical. Our customers enjoy visiting here and working with us, and they’ve referred to us as the “University of Desert Star” or a tribe on more than one occasion.

Our recent R&D efforts have been concentrated on satellite and other electronic marine animal tags, a field where NOAA, seeking greater innovation and reduced tagging costs, awarded Desert Star Systems another SBIR. Working closely with our science customers, SeaTag devices have introduced earth magnetic field sensing to fix the location of fish beyond the reach of GPS, solar power that supports operation underwater “indefinitely,” and ultra-precision sensors that can sense centimeter-level changes in depth to depths of hundreds of meters. Here, the modularity of our product line has enabled increasing economies of scale, as we develop and then deploy technologies across an arc of new devices. This is now providing the cost reductions desired by the science community and essential for the increasingly sophisticated and large-scale studies of the behavior of marine animals in complex and changing eco-systems.

Recently, a visiting journalist working on a story about SeaTag observed that our long history of developing technologies for a spectrum of military and science applications may have provided us with “technological overkill” that we are now bringing to bear on the electronic tagging market. This is a statement that points to the future of our company. Nearly twenty years of concentrated effort have provided us with a product and technology portfolio of a much larger organization – one ranging from small high-precision sensor platforms to extensive underwater tracking ranges.

Today, as we are changing operations to prepare for future growth, Desert Star is at an inflection point in its history. Our company’s ultimate value to you, our customers, rests in the scaling of our capabilities, in applying our know-how and technology to ever more substantial tasks.

And so, our company’s mission is simple: To help you solve the problems of the future.

Desert Star is a remarkable story and a remarkable company, which I have the great privilege of leading.  Powered by a passion for the oceans, getting to where we are meant journeys of science, engineering, and exploration to the most remote regions from the bottom of the mid-Atlantic to under the ice in Antarctica.  The dangers at times were potentially deadly, including a great white shark attack stopped cold by our sturdy early gear to submarine emergencies over 2800 fathoms below the seas. Today, our innovation is based on over 25 years of deep insights into 'how things work' in earth's oceans.  I split my time between fieldwork gaining new insights often in partnership with our customers, translation of these insights into new products in our lab and leading our multi-generation company, with now its third generation of owner-operators.  At DSS we can almost certainly advise and answer your questions on matters satellite tagging, underwater acoustic monitoring, the application of acoustic releases in rope-less fishing or to deploy large instrument arrays, underwater precision positioning/surveying, acoustic communication and more.  I urge you to contact our capable team members first for a fast response and am looking forward to assisting in making your project a success!  

Visit Desert Star Systems and you will find a company infused with a passion for science and exploration, cutting edge engineering and quality manufacturing. It is a company where SCUBA classes are offered as a job benefit and a place where testing equipment in the rigors of Antarctica or joining a user for weeks of instrument deployment at sea are considered as essential as understanding the physics of the magnetosphere or knowledge and application of the latest programming environment.

Founded by Marco Flagg in 1992 on the idea of a “buddy finder” for SCUBA divers, our company soon won an SBIR award from NOAA to develop a precision diver tracking and communication capability for the agency’s Aquarius underwater laboratory in Key Largo, FL. This development with its challenging requirement for operation in shallow waters with high background noise levels and extensive reverberations became the basis of an entire line of underwater positioning and communication systems, that continues as a core competency and revenue generator of our company today.

The understanding that the development of effective technology for use in earth’s most extreme environments requires deep personal field expertise was essential to the subsequent development of the FrogEye amphibious camera for the U.S. Special Operations Command. Here, Desert Star’s design team competed against two manufacturers including Kodak. But based on innovations such as a free-flooded telephoto lens coupled with an electron multiplier CCD night vision that allows divers to image distant targets in brief surface intervals, Desert Star became the only team to introduce a production design. FrogEye has since been deployed by multiple allied militaries and is assigned NATO stock numbers (NSN).

Throughout its history, our company has emphasized hiring a skunk-works like crew, individuals with a variety of often unconventional backgrounds and individuals who might be overlooked in the regular course of hiring, but who come together here to be given the freedom to experiment and create products that are advanced yet tough and practical. Our customers enjoy visiting here and working with us, and they’ve referred to us as the “University of Desert Star” or a tribe on more than one occasion.

Our recent R&D efforts have been concentrated on satellite and other electronic marine animal tags, a field where NOAA, seeking greater innovation and reduced tagging costs, awarded Desert Star Systems another SBIR. Working closely with our science customers, SeaTag devices have introduced earth magnetic field sensing to fix the location of fish beyond the reach of GPS, solar power that supports operation underwater “indefinitely,” and ultra-precision sensors that can sense centimeter-level changes in depth to depths of hundreds of meters. Here, the modularity of our product line has enabled increasing economies of scale, as we develop and then deploy technologies across an arc of new devices. This is now providing the cost reductions desired by the science community and essential for the increasingly sophisticated and large-scale studies of the behavior of marine animals in complex and changing eco-systems.

Recently, a visiting journalist working on a story about SeaTag observed that our long history of developing technologies for a spectrum of military and science applications may have provided us with “technological overkill” that we are now bringing to bear on the electronic tagging market. This is a statement that points to the future of our company. Nearly twenty years of concentrated effort have provided us with a product and technology portfolio of a much larger organization – one ranging from small high-precision sensor platforms to extensive underwater tracking ranges.

Today, as we are changing operations to prepare for future growth, Desert Star is at an inflection point in its history. Our company’s ultimate value to you, our customers, rests in the scaling of our capabilities, in applying our know-how and technology to ever more substantial tasks.

And so, our company’s mission is simple: To help you solve the problems of the future.