U.S. Navy and General Dynamics Unveil Model of Minehunting, Heavyweight, Unmanned Undersea Vehicle

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the U. S. Navy’s Pro­gram Exec­u­tive Office, Lit­toral Com­bat Ships Unmanned Mar­itime Sys­tems Pro­gram Office and Gen­er­al Dynam­ics unveiled a quar­ter-scale mod­el of the Sur­face Mine Coun­ter­mea­sure Unmanned Under­sea Vehi­cle (SMCM UUV), known as “Knife­fish,” at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Expo­si­tion being held at the Gay­lord Nation­al Resort. Knife­fish is a heavy­weight-class, mine­hunt­ing, unmanned under­sea vehi­cle designed for deploy­ment by for­ward oper­at­ing forces, and will be a part of the Lit­toral Com­bat Ship Mine Coun­ter­mea­sures Mis­sion Package. 

The SMCM UUV sys­tem will allow Navy com­man­ders and sailors to detect and iden­ti­fy mines in high-clut­ter under­wa­ter envi­ron­ments with­out putting sailors in harm’s way, includ­ing mines that are sus­pend­ed in the ocean, rest­ing on the sea floor or buried. Addi­tion­al­ly, it will gath­er envi­ron­men­tal data that can pro­vide intel­li­gence sup­port for oth­er mine war­fare systems. 

“Knife­fish rep­re­sents a major step for­ward for unmanned under­sea tech­nol­o­gy and will pro­vide sailors with a reli­able, safe, cost-effi­cient capa­bil­i­ty that is not cur­rent­ly a part of the Navy’s port­fo­lio” said Nadia Short, vice pres­i­dent for Strat­e­gy and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. “Our team took advan­tage of exten­sive open archi­tec­ture exper­tise to devel­op a design that ensures Knife­fish will con­tin­ue to evolve with the Navy, as mis­sion needs change and advance.” 

Knife­fish recent­ly com­plet­ed a suc­cess­ful sys­tem require­ments review on sched­ule and will progress through the pre­lim­i­nary design review in May of this year. Knife­fish is expect­ed to attain ini­tial oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty in 2017. 

The devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing work on this pro­gram is per­formed in Greens­boro, N.C., Fair­fax, Va., Quin­cy, Mass., Brain­tree, Mass., and Pana­ma City, Fla. 

For more infor­ma­tion about Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, a busi­ness unit of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics (NYSE: GD), please vis­it www.gd-ais.com.

More infor­ma­tion about Gen­er­al Dynam­ics is avail­able online at www.generaldynamics.com.

Source:
Gen­er­al Dynamics