EDMONDS – Defense contracting is not just the province of large, well known companies such as Boeing and Lockheed.
One of the newest and smaller defense contractors in Snohomish County is Sound and Sea Technology of Edmonds. The company specializes in project planning and management of the marine engineering aspects of commercial and government operations around the world.
Founded in March 1999 by Judith and Dallas Meggitt, Sound and Sea Technology was recently awarded the largest contract in its history, a $13.5 million deal to plan and implement over five years elements of an undersea warfare and detection system for the U.S. Navy.
Most of the project preparation will occur in California and be deployed around the world.
The concept of submarine warfare conjures up images of scenes from the Cold War, with Soviet and Amercian submarines chasing each other around the world. Those images often draw questions of the Meggitts about the need for undersea warfare technology in an age when the focus of U.S. defense policy seems aimed at terrorist cells and the security of the air traffic system.
The Meggitts’ response draws a frightening picture of terrorist activities that could dwarf the impact of a 9-11 type attack without the dramatic images of airliners devestating the New York skyline. They view underwater warfare as a critical element of the Homeland Defense program.
“Most people don’t know that there are over 400 submarines in the world and most of them are not in the hands of our friends,’” Dallas said. “If two airplanes being smashed into buildings shut down our economy for three days, can you imagine the economic devestation that an attack on our ports would cause? All the ports could be closed for months.”
From its Edmonds base of operations, Sound and Sea, often referred to as SST, coordinates operations around the world. While the current revenue stream is mainly defense related, SST established its reputation during the now collapsed telecom bubble. Much of the same technology and project management that goes into surveying and testing undersea defense systems is applicable to the laying and monitoring of undersea communications cables. One such SST project was designing and setting up a system to monitor communications cables running through the Olympic Marine Sanctuary off the Washington coast to assure that they were not damaging the environment.
The Meggitts started SST as an answer to Judith being downsized from her position with Northrop in California and Dallas being given the option of moving to Rhode Island with Raytheon closed its local operations.
Using Dallas’ technical expertise and Judith’s business experience in concert with a network of former co-workers, SST started on the Meggitts kitchen table. SST got off to a quick start that surprised the husband and wife team.
“I thought I would have a few weeks to do my ‘honey-do’ projects while we got started,” said Dallas. “I had an afternoon before the phone started ringing.”
SST started with a $9000 contract to conduct a sound test near the Olympic Penensula on a prototype boat being designed for special forces operations.
The Meggitts give much of the credit for SST’s successful bid on their latest contract to the Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), a program funded by the Department of Defense and operated in conjunction with the Snohomish County Economic Development Council to assist small businesses to understand the federal bidding process and participte in it successfully. The amount of the SST contract more than doubles the monetary amount of contracts procured by Washington State businesses in the first half of 2002 through the PTAC program.
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