The Navy and contractor General Dynamics [GD] for the first time unveiled the unmanned undersea mine hunting vehicle designed for deployment on the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) at the Sea Air Space Exposition hosted by the Navy League yesterday.
The Surface Mine Countermeasure Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (SMCM UUV), known as “Knifefish” and developed by General Dynamics, is a heavyweight-class vehicle intended to detect and identify mines in high-clutter underwater environments, or to gather data that can be fed to other mine warfare systems.
Knifefish will be part of the mine countermeasure mission module on the Littoral Combat Ships, one of three mission packages that also include anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) selected General Dynamics for the program in September. Knifefish contains an open architecture design to ensure it can be effectively upgraded over time to meet evolving Navy requirements, said Nadio Short, vice president for strategy and business development at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.
Capt. Duane Ashton, the program manager for unmanned maritime systems in the LCS program executive office, told Defense Daily on the sidelines of Sea Air Space that Knifefish is expected to reach initial operational capability (IOC) in fiscal 2017, when it will undergo its first testing in the water. The program of record calls for building 30 of the systems, 24 for deployment and six for training, Ashton said.
“We are very excited about it,” Ashton said.
Ashton said Knifefish will go into preliminary design review (PDR) next month with critical design review (CDR) scheduled for within a year.