USS Pasadena 3D prints $1,000 watertight enclosure, replacing $200,000 submarine alteration
On August 24, 2026, sailors aboard USS Pasadena (SSN 752), a Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine, launched a Blueye X3 remotely operated vehicle out of a flooded torpedo tube using a 3D printed watertight enclosure that cost under $1,000 to build. The part it replaced is a Fiber Optic Penetrator, a Temporary Alteration that routes a communications line through the tube’s breach door and runs to about $200,000 per boat.
The Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity’s additive manufacturing team designed the enclosure and printed it on a Formlabs Form 4L using Rigid 10K resin. The SIMA 2M Shop fitted low-voltage cabling into the printed part and tied it into the ROV’s tether, then built a second external harness for the connection points outside the tube, with Blueye Robotics engineers helping mate that harness to the controller. Aside from the printed housing, every other component was existing cabling or hardware the command already held, since the ROV itself was already Navy property.
The trial traces back to Green Remora, a program Vice Adm. Rob Gaucher started to give submarine divers better hull-inspection tools. Commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic bought two Blueye ROVs under that initiative; launching one from a torpedo tube is the furthest they’ve pushed it so far. The command is now drafting a formal ROV Personnel Qualification Standard card to define training before routine use, and existing torpedo tube safety rules still apply.
The fix sits alongside a broader Navy push: on August 11, the service fast-tracked rules for metal printed parts in submarine construction and repair, with printed metal components already in service on USS Washington and USS Nevada. Pasadena’s result suggests the cheapest wins may come from resin printers solving a single crew’s problem rather than shipyard-scale metal systems.