Navy helps open Seattle lab that aims to ignite a 'Silicon Valley' for national security

SEATTLE — Using radio waves to find a target, a long-used technology widely known as radar has often required bulky equipment throughout its history.

Not anymore. In the past decade, Echodyne, a company of 90 employees based in Kirkland, has reduced radar to the size of a cell phone, a breakthrough that produces new possibilities. Its compact radar can easily ride on a small drone, for example.

"With our ability to shatter that (size) barrier, you then start opening more applications for radar," said Leo McCloskey, the company's vice president for marketing.

One of the company's clients turned out to be the government. The Department of Homeland Security is paying $20 million, through its Customs and Border Protection Innovation Team, to try out a ground-based radar that can surveil swaths of border areas.

Echodyne's successful contract, however, turns out to be a rarity here in matchmaking that leaders from the Navy and Defense Department are hoping to change. They believe not enough Pacific Northwest startups like Echodyne recognize when their technology leap could prove useful to the Pentagon and national security.

Defense leaders and their supporters hope to change that on the 33rd floor of a Seattle office building.

It is there, at the DocuSign Tower, that roomy, fish-bowl conference rooms named after salmon species and computer labs lined with inspirational quotes aim to bring together businesses, academics and the military for the furtherance of big ideas in tech.

The Mission Acceleration Center, as it is known, aims to solve this problem: Companies don't always know what opportunities are available for defense funding and how to attain it. Conversely, the military isn't always aware of emerging technologies.

"This is supposed to be the one-stop-shop that creates that access point," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Johannes Schonberg, the director of the Navy's Northwest tech bridge, which is based at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport.

Schonberg did note at the center's launch that there are "no guarantees" for money, but "it's about creating the relationships and connecting to the right organizations."

'How do we get venture capital talking to the military?'

In total, Washington state received $17.8 billion in Defense Department spending in 2019, the latest data available, an amount that makes it the eighth highest by state in the country.

About $11.2 billion of that came in the form of contracts, the bulk of which went to Boeing, at $7.8 billion. Military leaders are hoping the acceleration center can open the door to smaller tech companies that might not be familiar with the federal government's contracting process.

Denise Ryser, the market development director for the Pacific Northwest Defense Coalition, told the Puget Sound Business Journal the northwest is "under-leveraged," and the $11.2 billion total should be higher "because the talent is right here."

The Mission Acceleration Center "seeks to harness the same kind of energy that built up Silicon Valley," said Justin Dunnicliff, a University of Washington program director for the Defense Department's National Security Innovation Network.

The center is being funded through the innovation network and the Office of Naval Research on a budget of about $2 million per year.

The roughly 4,000-square-foot working lab, launched as Create33 in 2018 to be a co-working space, was closed by the uncertainty of the pandemic. But its rebirth, with help of the military and Impact Washington, a nonprofit that supports manufacturing business in the state, ensures a rent-paying tenant at $500,000 per year.

A key question was "how do we get venture capital talking to the military?" according to Michael McNutt, a consultant who works for Impact Washington.

And now, when it comes to the next big idea in national security innovation, the venture capitalists are just a staircase away. The lab leads directly to the 34th floor of the offices of Madrona Venture Group, a longtime Seattle private equity firm that has been investing in startups for more than 25 years.

“Government agencies, just like commercial businesses, can benefit from the incredible technical innovations being developed by startups in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest," said Scott Jacobson, managing director for Madrona Venture Group." It’s great to have the Mission Acceleration Center in Seattle, both to create awareness of these companies and technologies within defense and other government agencies and to help companies successfully sell into these organizations.”

The Navy's Schonberg, a Manette resident who ran for Bremerton City Council this year, is part of "NavalX," a new initiative by the Navy aimed at bringing together problem solvers within the "naval culture of decentralized autonomy" and mainly take on "sustainment" — how the Navy can keep its fleet safely at sea safely for longer periods of time. But with the Seattle Mission Acceleration Center, Schonberg and the northwest tech bridge have formed connective tissue with all the northwest's military commands, plugging them into a space where they can rub shoulders with academic researchers, investors and startup companies.

"We've gotta have a presence on both sides of the water," he said. "No one site can cover everything we need."

Josh Farley is a reporter covering the military and Bremerton for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-9227, josh.farley@kitsapsun.com or on Twitter at @joshfarley.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: New lab that aims to ignite a 'Silicon Valley' for national security