Mine Reconnaissance System News

The U.S. Navy has published a new Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) Master Plan, the first since 2000. The new plan will serve as a guide for the continued evolution of UUV technologies, increasingly critical components of the 21st century fleet. The plan, completed late in 2004 and approved for publication in January, holds steady on course to develop UUVs' "signature" capabilities-maritime reconnaissance, undersea search and survey, oceanography, communication and navigation aid, and submarine track and trail. At the same time, the plan pushes back the technological boundaries to define a new set of capabilities that will be important going forward. The Navy's new UUV Master Plan depicts four basic classes of tactical UUVs, which are to be developed over the next 10-15 years.

Boeing has completed a second round of at-sea tests of its Long-term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS), a 20-foot unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to be launched, torpedo-style, from Los Angeles- and Virginia-class submarines to survey underwater objects for up to 60 hours. Originally planned for use in detecting tethered and bottom mines, the vehicle is designed to gather data and, upon completion, to home and dock to the submarine's 60-foot robotic arm for recovery back through the torpedo launch tube, enabling operators to retrieve data collected and prepare the vehicle for another launch. The vehicle's intelligence gathering capabilities have been sequentially tested and validated.

The U.S. Navy has tested an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV), operating from a submerged nuclear attack submarine (SSN). The UUV is the AN/BLQ-11 long-term mine reconnaissance system (LMRS), which contains sonars that enable it to search for naval mines, or anything else. In effect the LMRS can scout ahead for the SSN, or simply search an area. The LMRS is about the size of a torpedo, and is launched and recovered via a torpedo tube. The LMRS can operate for 40 hours, and up to 135 (eventually over 200) kilometers from the submarine. Cruising speed is about 7 kilometers an hour, with a top speed of 12 kilometers an hour. It can operate from ten to 200 feet beneath the surface.

The fast-attack submarine USS Scranton (SSN 756) successfully demonstrated homing and docking of an Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) system during at-sea testing in January 2006, UVOnline.com reported. The two UUVs used in the testing are a part of the AN/BLQ-11 Long Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS), which was designed to enable submarines to conduct clandestine undersea surveys to locate mines. Repeated homing tests were conducted with slightly different configurations to assess the ability of a UUV to dock with a torpedo-tube-mounted recovery system. The final result was the first successful docking of the LMRS vehicle to a submerged submarine at-sea. The LMRS test demonstrated technologies possible from completely autonomous UUVs.

On January 20 the Royal Norwegian Navy (RNoN) directed the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) to deliver a military Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) prototype, with the intention of using the military AUV system in mine countermeasure (MCM) and rapid environmental assessment (REA) ops. The delivery is part of a plan to establish a forward autonomous MCM/REA capability to the Navy. The delivery is a successor to the very successful operations, test and evaluations performed by the use of the HUGIN I vehicle from one of the RNoN MCM vessels during the last two years. Kongsberg Simrad will produce and deliver the vehicle by the end of 2003.