Juliet Marine Systems, Inc. (JMS) was featured in Bloomberg Businessweek on October 19, 2016 and in Business Insider on November 5, 2016.
The Bloomberg article, titled “The Feds Won’t Buy This $19 Million Stealth Boat—or Let It Be Sold Abroad,” and the Business Insider article, titled “This man built a cutting-edge stealth boat for the US Navy. Then the government tried to put him out of business,” both highlight the company’s reaction to U.S. government restricting the company from showing its patents and technology to potential buyers, thereby preventing sales of its GHOST vessel.
(Juliet Marine Systems is funding and designing GHOST, a cutting-edge stealth sea vessel, but will the U.S. Navy buy it? Courtesy of CNN, JMS and YouTube)
The articles additionally note the company’s July 2015 lawsuit against the government to recoup damages as well as its expectations for an upcoming trial.
Gregory Sancoff, President and CEO of JMS, said, “I am a patriotic American citizen—I believe in protecting our national security and expected the government would fund and collaborate with JMS to develop and test the JMS technology as they stated they would.”
Mr. Sancoff spent more than a decade developing businesses based on his 57 patents and inventions that improved the healthcare of millions of Americans before developing JMS and GHOST.
JMS spent eight years developing the technology encompassed in its GHOST small waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH) vessel, whose control and stability for the safe transport of personnel and payloads has been tested in sea trials performed off the New England coast.
(Learn More about Ghost, courtesy of the ArmedForcesUpdate and YouTube)
In 2009, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) met with JMS and offered a small initial contract, requiring JMS to turn over all patent rights to the U.S. government, which was refused by the company.
Subsequently, in October 2009, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office placed Secrecy Orders (SOs) on JMS patents which prevent JMS from testing GHOST, prevent partnering with large defense companies and prevent raising funds publicly to progress the technology.
Additional SOs were placed in 2010 and 2011, further preventing JMS’s development plans. In 2011, the Navy removed the SOs from GHOST.
Yet after years of trying to work with the U.S. Department of Defense through traditional and nontraditional avenues to protect and develop its unique technology, JMS met with representatives of several friendly nations and attempted to export the technology to them, only to be prevented from doing so by the numerous provisos attached by the Navy International Programs Office (NIPO) to every DSP-5 export license JMS submitted.
Sancoff emerging from Ghost’s cockpit (Photo Credit: Guido Vitti)
“At a meeting with the FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and RADM Thomas Richards (Ret), JMS’s Vice President and Senior Military Affairs Advisor, JMS was informed that an investigation by NCIS showed the Navy removed the SOs from JMS patents illegally even though the technology falls within Department of Defense security guidelines for classification and broke federal law,” said Sancoff.
“JMS technology includes supercavitation technology, which is always classified to prevent its falling into the hands of unfriendly nations.”
JMS requested the NCIS report under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—it was located but JMS was then informed that portions of it were classified after the FOIA request.
“We want to conclude this claim for damages and get on with our mission of protecting American ships and the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and other troubled waters,” said Sancoff.
To read the Bloomberg Businessweek article, please visit the following link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-19/the-feds-won-t-buy-this-19-million-stealth-boat-or-let-it-be-sold-abroad
To read the Business Insider article, please visit the following link: http://www.businessinsider.com/juliet-marine-systems-ghost-boat-2016-11
Juliet Marine Systems is dedicated to the rapid development and deployment of technologies that will enhance performance and safety in small vessels.
We employ an agile design process to develop advanced vessels and associated technologies much faster, and at greatly reduced cost, as compared to typical defense contractors or heavy industry.
Inspired by our team’s experience with medical devices, advanced robotics and venture capital start-ups, we have taken the concept of “thinking out of the box” and applied it across all facets of system research, design, development and production.
We are proud to bring a disruptive approach to one of the oldest technical professions, shipbuilding.
