Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Peter Doherty · SubSea Craft · The United States · August 2026
SubSea Craft has announced plans to expand its operations to Virginia Beach, so this map covers the United States. In defense and dual-use markets, first contact usually happens through a program office, a prime, or a show floor, and each of those reaches the part of the market that already knows the name. This map is the rest: the US segments that buy, specify or integrate maritime and undersea capability, who signs inside each one, and roughly how many organizations sit there. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Naval shipbuilders, boatbuilders and marine integrators
The segment closest to the platform itself, and the one where a craft becomes part of somebody else's program rather than a standalone sale. Long to qualify, and a single design win tends to carry several years of work behind it.
Who signs: vice president of business development, capture lead, chief engineer, program manager.
1,400 to 1,800
US organizations registered under ship and boat building and marine engineering codes
Defense primes and mission systems houses
Where undersea autonomy, sensing and command systems are bought as subsystems rather than as vessels. The relevant people sit inside programs that already have a name and a budget, and they are looking for partners rather than suppliers, which is a different conversation from a sales one.
Who signs: director of undersea or maritime programs, capture manager, chief technologist, supply chain and partnering lead.
2,500 to 3,000
US organizations registered under defense electronics and mission systems codes
Offshore energy, survey and subsea services
The largest dual-use pool on this page. These operators buy on commercial cycles rather than appropriations, which makes the decision faster and the motion closer to ordinary industrial selling. They are also the least contested by companies that sell defense first.
Who signs: vice president of operations, subsea or marine asset manager, survey operations director, health and safety director.
2,000 to 2,600
US employers across offshore support, marine survey and subsea services
Port, harbor and maritime security operators
Port authorities, marine patrol units and the contractors who run waterside security. Individually small, and unusually repeatable, because the requirement is standing rather than program shaped.
Who signs: director of security, chief of the marine unit, operations director, emergency management lead.
700 to 1,000
US port authorities, marine law enforcement units and maritime security contractors
Applied research labs, test ranges and university centers
Where new maritime technology gets evaluated before anyone procures it, and where a trial can be funded without a program of record behind it. Slow to pay, fast to try, and the reference value is out of proportion to the size of the work.
Who signs: director of research programs, principal investigator, test facility director, technology transition lead.
300 to 500
US oceanographic, applied physics and maritime test facilities
Government program offices and allied navies
The buyer everyone in this market actually wants, and the one no public register lists as companies. Stated plainly: requirement owners and capability managers are reached by name, by program and by event, one at a time. That difficulty is exactly why the segment stays open.
Who signs: program executive officer, requirements or capability manager, science and technology lead, foreign military sales officer.
No public register
reached by name and by program; described here rather than counted

Where the openings are

1
This market runs on two clocks and most sellers watch only one. Defense buys on appropriations and programs of record. Offshore energy, ports and research buy on commercial and grant cycles that turn over several times a year. The dual-use segments on this page come to roughly 3,000 to 4,100 US organizations on the faster clock, and they are rarely worked by anyone who sells defense first.
2
A US expansion changes who has to know the name, not what the product is. Your own announcement points the company at Virginia Beach. The requirement owners, the primes that integrate and the commercial operators that would trial the technology are three separate audiences, and in this market one channel almost never reaches all three.
3
A show floor selects for whoever already came. A defense exhibition reaches the organizations that budgeted for the exhibition. The ones with the problem and no travel money that quarter never appear, and they are the larger number by a wide margin.
4
In this category the constraint is distribution, not credibility. The counted segments above come to roughly 6,900 to 8,900 US organizations. Building the craft is the discipline you already have. The machinery that puts a capability in front of several thousand named engineers, capture leads and operations directors on a schedule, and tracks what comes back, is a separate build, and most firms in this category never make it. That is the part we build, and we hand it over when it works.
Built from public federal registry data covering US organizations registered to do business with federal agencies, and US employers that file a benefit plan, current to the 2024 filing year. Counts are banded deliberately. Registers count registered entities rather than trading sites, sector codes are self-reported, and one organization can appear under more than one code. Government program offices and allied navies are not published in any company register and are described rather than counted.
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