Surface & Shallow Water MCM

Abstract

This program element provides resources for development of unmanned mine countermeasures systems to provide minehunting, minesweeping, and mine neutralization to counter known and projected mine threats. The mine countermeasures systems provide mobile, quick reaction forces capable of land-based or sea-based minehunting and minesweeping operations worldwide. Resources are for developing and deploying advanced minehunting and minesweeping systems and the intelligence and oceanographic capabilities that will enable mine warfare superiority. Tactics and techniques used vary across a diversity of environments and a diversity of threats, including both asymmetric and emerging. Resources provide for systems and support of mine warfare systems, maritime systems, and expeditionary systems to allow for continuous operations of the Navy's warships and support vessels, other military vessels, and commercial vessels. Core capabilities include forward presence, deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security, humanitarian assistance and disaster response to maintain freedom of the seas. Increased capability includes conducting minefield reconnaissance (mine density and location) at high area search rates, improving detection capability; decreasing sensor false alarm rates; reducing or eliminating post-mission analysis detect, classify, identify, decide time; improving neutralization time; improving network communications; automatic target recognition; and achieving in-stride detect-to-engage capability. Concept of operations includes development of cooperative, unmanned, modular systems; the establishment of a capable networked command and control system; and standing up an accurate and interactive environmental system with the ability to form and disseminate a Common Environmental Picture. Efforts benefit the Mine Countermeasure (MCM) force by transforming the Navy from the platform-centered legacy set of systems to a capability-centered force that is distributed, networked, and able to provide unique maritime influence and access across the entire maritime domain. The Surface and Shallow Water MCM systems consist of two programs: The USV program develops: (1) unmanned surface minehunting capability USVs designed to integrate MCM systems employed by the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Class and other vessels of opportunity (VOO) platforms and (2) the integration and improvement of new and existing MCM capabilities and payloads (Minesweeping Payload Deployment System [PDS] , Minehunting PDS, and Mine Neutralization PDS) to provide detection, classification, localization, identification, neutralization, and influence clearance capabilities. The Barracuda system is an expendable, modular, mine neutralizer launched from the Mine Countermeasures (MCM) Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) as part of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) MCM Mission Package (MP) to autonomously reacquire and neutralize previously detected near-surface mines. Upon entering the water, the vehicle will conduct a search, capture an image, and use a communications buoy to send the image to the operator in the MCM MP to evaluate the image and order the weapon to fire, abort, or continue searching. Future capabilities may include launch from manned or unmanned aircraft or vessels of opportunity as well as the ability to neutralize mines in volume and on the bottom.

Document Details

• Document Type: R2 Budgetary Justification
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2023
• Source ID: 0603502N_4_1319_PB_2023
• Change Summary Explanation: FY 2021: reduced by $1,560K for SBIR assessments and $10K for reprogramming actions. FY 2022: reduced by $4,622K for Barracuda schedule delays and $64K for Congressional General Reductions. Technical: Not applicable. Schedule: Not applicable. --- FY 2023 funding increase reflects the fact that the FY 2022 President’s Budget request did not include out-year funding.
• Service Agency Name: Navy

Entities

Organizations

• United States Navy

Tags

Communities of Interest

• Air Platforms
• Autonomy
• Ground and Sea Platforms
• Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

• Command And Control
• Command And Control Systems
• Configuration Management
• Control Systems
• Defense Systems
• Deployment
• Detection
• Littoral Combat Ships
• Product Development
• Program Management
• Situational Awareness
• Software Development
• Systems Engineering
• Target Recognition
• Test And Evaluation
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
• Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Readers

• Naval Mine Countermeasure Systems Development.

Technology Areas

• Autonomy
• Autonomy - UAVs
• Fully Networked C3
• Fully Networked C3 - Command and Control