Knifefish UUV completes contractor trials
General Dynamics Mission Systems has completed contractor trials for the US Navy’s Knifefish mine countermeasure (MCM) UUV programme, the company announced on 26 October.
Knifefish is designed for deployment from the navy's Littoral Combat Ship and other navy vessels. The UUV will operate as an off-board sensor while the host ship stays outside the minefield boundaries.
During contractor trials carried out off the coast of Boston, Massachusetts, Knifefish operated in multiple mine test target fields at sea using buried, bottom and volume type mine-test targets. The UUV successfully demonstrated its ability to detect, classify and identify potential mines, at a variety of depths, each of which would pose a threat to naval vessels operating in a mission area.
According to the company, the trials demonstrated end-to-end performance of the Knifefish system in realistic at-sea mission scenarios over the course of hundreds of hours of at-sea operation and more than a hundred simulated missions.
Kinfefish is based on the General Dynamics Bluefin Robotics Bluefin-21 deep-water autonomous undersea vehicle.
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