General Dynamics has won a design and development contract from the US Navy for the Surface Mine Countermeasure Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (SMCM UUV) worth $ 87 million. During the initial phase, the SMCM UUV will be part of the Littoral Combat Ship Mine Warfare.
Littoral Combat Ship
The contract is split into the Engineering Development Model and a total of five low-rate initial production systems.
With the SMCM UUV system, the sailors and the navy commanders will be in a better position to detect and identify mines even under highly-cluttered environments under the sea. These mines can be identified with high reliability in a single pass itself. Apart from the mines underwater, the UUV will be useful in identifying mines that are present in the ocean or even those that are hidden under the sea. The UUV will also be useful in capturing environmental data, which can be used by other mine warfare systems. The SMCM UUV is built based on an open architecture concept in order to have maximum adaptability in missions on Littoral Combat Ships and other types of ships. The missions undertaken by the Navy require plug and play flexibility of all the systems used on ships and mission modules. The equipment must be such that it must be possible to easily reconfigure the ship according to changes in missions. General Dynamics will be recruiting 10 new employees exclusively for working on the contract and the developmental activities will be done in Greensboro and Panama City. The Advanced Information Systems team of General Dynamics consists of members from Bluefin Robotics, Ultra Electronics Ocean Systems, Braintree and Quincy Mass. The navy office for the program is the Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office, which is part of the Navy’s Program Executive Office, Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
Source: http://www.gd-ais.com/