The Navy awarded Leidos [LDOS] a $36 million contract modification exercising an option to build, test and deliver four engineering development model Medium Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (MUUV).
A year ago, the Navy
selected Leidos over three competitors for a $12 million contract to design the MUUV, with options that could raise the total value to $358 million (Defense Daily, July 8, 2022).
The announcement said this latest contract will support the Navy’s next generation of the Razorback UUV and Viperfish Maritime Expeditionary Mine Countermeasures UUV program. The Viperfish is meant to provide improved mine countermeasures capabilities over the older MK 18 Mod 2, built by HII’s [HII] Technical Solution Unmanned Systems business unit, formerly Hydroid.
L3Harris Technologies [LHX] is the partner of Leidos in an MUUV joint acquisition venture.
In 2022 the Navy started the process for the MUUV with a Request For Proposals (RFP) for the design, development, test and production of MUUVs that can be deployed in two configurations, both ashore and from various vessels.
While MUUV will include a common baseline architecture for its sensors and components, it will be divided into the Razorback Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery (TTL&R) and surface-launched Maritime Expeditionary Mine Countermeasures UUV (MEMUUV) configurations.
Work will largely occur in Fall River, Mass., and is expected to be finished by April 2026.
Late last year, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, then-program executive officer for Unmanned and Small Combatants, said MUUV had completed an integrated baseline review and was moving forward to execute the system engineering review, system requirements review and system functional review (Defense Daily, Nov. 3, 2022).
The Razorback variant is based on the HII REMUS 600 UUV.
In November, Vice Adm. Bill Houston, commander of submarine force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet Commander, and Allied Submarine Command underscored the UUV based in a submarine torpedo tube can serve missions like serving as a scout that scans and searches and then returns. He noted they are not expecting to base a large number on each vessel because it is recoverable and reusable, so the boats do not have to reserve many torpedo tubes.
However, at the time Houston admitted software and systems to recover the Razorback were still sticking points, but the service plans to have something operational “in the not too distant future.”