Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has been awarded an option year production contract for new Lionfish small unmanned undersea vehicles (SUUVs) for the US Navy.
The SUUVs will be based on HII’s commercial UUV platform, which was originally developed as part of a rapid prototyping initiative in collaboration with the US Navy and the US Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit.
Designed to address a broad range of undersea warfare missions, Lionfish will support operations such as mine countermeasures; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; anti-submarine warfare; and electronic warfare.
The five-year program could scale to as many as 200 vehicles, with a total contract value exceeding US$347 million.
The craft is a modular, open-architecture SUUV engineered for multi-mission adaptability. Its open-architecture design will enable rapid payload integration and future technology upgrades, allowing operators to adapt the system to evolving mission needs while maintaining cost efficiency over the platform lifecycle.
UUVs from the same series have been delivered to the US Navy and overseas customers including the UK Royal Navy.
