Rear
Admiral Brian K. Antonio, Program Executive Officer, Littoral Combat
Ships, visited the Bluefin Robotics Corporation facility in Quincy,
MA on February 4th, 2016. As the milestone decision authority for the
Knifefish Mine Counter Measure program, RDML Antonio toured Bluefin’s
facility and received a detailed program brief from the Knifefish contractor
team, including General Dynamics Mission Systems and Bluefin Robotics.
|
|
RDML Antonio
inspected all Knifefish hardware including three engineering development
model Knifefish Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUV). Several key subsystems
were reviewed in detail, including a newly designed propulsion unit
and subsea batteries that completed the first phase of stringent safety
certification testing. To date, Knifefish UUVs have completed over 30
hours of at sea testing verifying the seaworthiness of the vehicle design.
The ease of operating, servicing, and maintaining the Knifefish UUV
and related mission support systems was witnessed during a working vehicle
demonstration, highlighting the unique qualities of the vehicle’s
modular, free flooding architecture. Additionally, the effectiveness
and modularity of the Knifefish vehicle design to support multiple payload
sensor variants was discussed by the Knifefish team.
Program execution plans and milestones were reviewed and RDML Antonio
reiterated the Navy’s commitment to the Knifefish system as an
important solution to meeting a critical mine counter measure mission
set. |
