NEWPORT, R.I. – A collaborative research and development effort led by a U.S. Navy team recently demonstrated a new launch and recovery concept for large unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs), with staff from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport and Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), which is headquartered in Virginia.
The demonstration, conducted at Division Newport’s Narragansett Bay Test Facility in October, showed both a land-based launch and recovery approach and a new solution for launching large UUVs from U.S. Navy amphibious ships. The demonstration included the Snakehead large displacement unmanned undersea vehicle (LDUUV) prototype and the Pharos large launch and recovery vehicle (LLRV) designed by HII.
Snakehead, a modular, reconfigurable, multi-mission LDUUV, provides support for intelligence preparation of the operational environment missions.