Thursday marks the last day of the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC) in Downtown Tampa.

What You Need To Know

  • This week, a number of defense contractors showed off their goods in Tampa

  • The Whiskey Project showed off a watercraft that has sensors that can connect troops separated by hundreds of miles

  • The group tries to think of the end consumer when creating their products

The conference was a chance for thousands of people in the special ops community from across the world to not only connect on current events, but for companies to showcase possibilities for future tactical technologies. 

We caught up with a team from Australia who are combining knowledge from military service with creativity out on the water.

“A show like SOFIC for me is kind of a trip home professionally,” said Ollie Sattin as he steered a state-of-the-art combatant watercraft around Hillsborough Bay.

Sattin spent 26 years serving in the Royal Australian Navy. “I was a former clearance diver, EOD technician, and spent a lot of time working in Special Operations Command,” he said.

These days, he’s the Product Development Manager with an Australian based company called The Whiskey Project. They design and manufacture the next generation, highly tactical watercraft. 

He’s been with the company since its early days in 2019, but it’s his background that gives them an advantage. “One of our company philosophies is that we wanted to build boats that we wish we had while we were serving,” Sattin said.

The boat is one of a kind. It’s not just about going fast, but being able to do a wide range of tasks like search and rescue, surveillance, and carrying weapons. On the boat, you’ll also find gear from major industry players like Aries Defense and Teledyne Flir.

“So on this combatant craft right now, we have multiple sensors and every one of those sensors goes into a network package, and that network package can then be sent out to our war fighters who are carrying small devices on their chest now, and they’re able to watch every video that is coming off of this boat at the same time,” said Douglas Pillsbury with Aries Defense.

The boat and the team have been traveling around the US for the past year at different shows and getting on the radar of government agencies. For Sattin, it means the future is full of possibilities.

“The user community will ultimately decide what they want to put on here, where they want to put it and we’re agile enough as a company that we can accommodate that for them and build it out in that way,” he said.