On January 6, 2016, Oakridge Global Energy Solutions (OTCQB: OGES) announced it had signed a deal to supply its lithium-ion batteries, most likely its Patriot Series, to Maritime Tactical Systems, Inc. (MARTAC) for use in that company’s Man-Portable Tactical Autonomous System (MANTAS). This deal is a big deal for Oakridge, since the market potential of the MANTAS is huge.
MANTAS is an Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV), or water drone, that can be used to patrol waterways along the shore line and in the open sea. They range in size from 9 inches to 50 feet. As MARTAC gushes on its website: the potential for this technology is unlimited through the utilization of COTS based equipment. COTS, for commercial-off-the-shelf, is a U.S. Federal Acquisition Regulation term for goods and services that can be purchased under government contract. MANTAS has an auxiliary command and control system, known as The Tactical System Support Command and Control Remote (TASKER), which has been field-proven many times from thousands of miles away. TASKER is scalable from large integrated control centers to hand-held device control, such as smart phones and tablets, by individuals. MARTAC says its MANTAS drone can be controlled from a full room command center, a mobile command center, an Android smartphone, a tablet or even an Xbox and that it can reach 65 knots (about 75 miles per hour).
Maritime drones or water drones are the less glamorous cousins of aerial drones, but they have as many uses as their high-flying relations. A story on the Boeing Defense, Space & Security website announces SHARCs prowl off the coast of Hawaii. The SHARC, short for Sensor Hosting Autonomous Remote Craft, was a joint venture between Boeing and Liquid Robotics. SHARCs can be used for data collection, surveillance and acoustic monitoring. Again, maritime drones have been successfully employed by the Italian Navy to destroy underwater WWII explosives (http://dtn.fm/UKPd1). With the signing of the MARTAC contract, Oakridge hasn’t wasted any time getting its Patriot Series of batteries to customers. It was just October 2015, that the company announced (http://dtn.fm/8nVQv) ‘the production launch of its Patriot Series line of battery systems for radio controlled vehicles such as drones, multi-copters, aerial vehicles, water based vehicles and land based vehicles that require long lasting levels of power.’
As CEO, Steve Barber, said at that time, “This product line is geared toward those applications such as Drones and R/C vehicles that require a long-lasting power source, without the puffing and swelling, and poor lifecycles seen in many foreign manufactured batteries in this market segment. This is a very exciting product line and we are really pleased with the way that it underscores our mission statement of on-shoring jobs and manufacturing back to the USA by providing the market with another Made in the USA product instead of having to rely on imported products. And not only is the Patriot Series range of R/C batteries a tremendous set of much needed products that are being incredibly well received by the R/C market, it is also a really fun, rapidly growing market segment that can be enjoyed by all the family, and we are delighted to be playing a key role in improving everyone’s ability to enjoy their participation in it.”
The Oakridge Patriot Series product line is being released in 2,500mAh, 5,000mAh and 10,000mAh versions, with plans to release additional models in spring of 2016. These batteries have been tested for more than 600 charge / discharge cycles, which equates to more than 1.5 years of cycling every day.
For more information, visit www.oakridgeglobalenergy.com
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