A joint team from Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and US Navy’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport recently completed a test that confirmed the compatibility of the REMUS 620 unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) with the weapons handling and torpedo tube systems of the US Navy's Virginia-class submarines.
“This clears the way for continued testing in advance of an in-water end-to-end launch and recovery at a US Navy test fixture facility later this summer,” said Adrian Gonsalves, HII’s REMUS 620 Product Lead.
HII said a Remus 620 UUV fitted with WHOI’s proprietary docking technology successfully completed a full end-to-end dry checkout of the autonomous underwater vehicle/shock and fire enclosure capsule (AUV/SAFECAP) "all-up round” (AUR) in the Virginia-class cradle payload integration facility and its Mark 71 torpedo tube.
This follows the submarine USS Delaware successfully completing the first-ever forward-deployed launch and recovery of a UUV via submarine torpedo tube with a REMUS 600 UUV equipped with WHOI's docking technology.