From Test Floor to Fleet: HII and Nominal Team to Compress the Autonomous Unmanned Production Curve
MCLEAN, Va., March 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HII (NYSE:HII), the world's leading manufacturer of autonomous surface and underwater unmanned vehicles, and advanced engineering and test firm Nominal (https://nominal.io), today announced a partnership to modernize the collection, validation, and analysis of data, including digital-twin test and mission data for HII's REMUS family of autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and ROMULUS unmanned surface vehicles (USVs).
The partnership will support standardized workflows, democratized access to product data from the component level to the vehicle level, accelerated vehicle post-mission analysis, and improved traceability and trend analysis of historical data across all stages of vehicle assembly and testing.
REMUS vehicles are the world's leading UUVs and are trusted by more than 30 navies worldwide, including 14 NATO members, for missions such as mine countermeasures, undersea survey, intelligence collection, and environmental sensing. Paired with HII's proven REMUS UUVs, the ROMULUS USV significantly extends undersea reach by closing anti-submarine warfare sensing gaps and keeping manned platforms at a safer standoff distance. Together, ROMULUS and REMUS deliver a scalable, dual-domain solution across surface and subsurface missions that integrates with manned platforms to enable a Hybrid Fleet capability.
The Nominal-supported data project is one of several improvements HII is implementing across the REMUS and ROMULUS manufacturing pipeline to augment vehicle production and overall manufacturing capacity.
"Autonomy programs move at the speed of their test-and-learn loop," said Cameron McCord, CEO and co-founder at Nominal. "To maintain maritime security, testing needs to span manufacturing through operations, and from prototype to high-scale production —the HII and Nominal partnership will bring resilient technologies to bear at speed, at scale."
"The REMUS UUV is a proven, globally deployed platform, and our partnership with Nominal strengthens how we scale and evolve it while accelerating the development of the ROMULUS USV family," said Eric Chewning, executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. "By standardizing how we collect and analyze test data, we are shortening feedback loops, improving traceability, and moving faster from testing to delivery—advancing maritime autonomy at a time when it is critical to the security of the U.S. and our allies."
The partnership builds on a successful pilot completed in 2025 that demonstrated meaningful cycle-time reductions across multiple workflows. During the pilot, teams reduced some analysis tasks from hours to minutes through standardized, automated analysis templates, and cut certain production test steps by approximately half by streamlining data capture and execution on the test floor.
In 2026, HII and Nominal will broaden deployment to support increased REMUS and ROMULUS production by integrating Nominal's tools across HII's product lifecycle and manufacturing systems. The focus is on providing engineering, test, and quality teams with a shared, repeatable way to collect, validate, and analyze data—reducing time spent assembling information and increasing time spent on expanding production capacity.
About HII
HII is a global, all-domain defense provider. HII's mission is to deliver the world's most powerful ships and all-domain solutions in service of the nation, creating the advantage for our customers to protect peace and freedom around the world. As the nation's largest military shipbuilder, and with a more than 135-year history of advancing U.S. national security, HII delivers critical capabilities extending from ships to unmanned systems, cyber, ISR, AI/ML and synthetic training. Headquartered in Virginia, HII's workforce is 44,000 strong. For more information, visit:
- HII on the web: https://www.HII.com/
- HII on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamHII
- HII on X: https://www.twitter.com/WeAreHII
- HII on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/WeAreHII
Press Contact: Greg McCarthy [email protected]
About Nominal
Founded in 2022, Nominal is built on the belief that learning from tests faster than the threat is how the United States builds lasting technological advantage. By turning testing into a continuous, secure source of truth across complex programs, Nominal helps the government and its partners field mission-critical systems with speed and confidence. For more information, visit: https://nominal.io/. Follow Nominal on LinkedIn and X.
Press Contact: [email protected]
