Knifefish Unmanned Undersea Vehicle
Keeping Sailors Out Of The Minefield
Knifefish is a medium-class Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) designed for deployment off the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The Knifefish UUV provides the mine warfare commander with enhanced mine-hunting capability by detecting, classifying and identifying both buried mines and mines in high clutter environments.
The LCS Mine Countermeasure Mission Package
A critical element of the LCS Mine Countermeasure (MCM) mission package, which is comprised of many different mine warfare platforms, including Knifefish, is its common open systems architecture design. Such modularity of the mission package allows for platform flexibility and quick reconfiguration of the whole mission package in response to evolving and dynamic mission requirements the fleet will encounter day-to-day.
Knifefish’s job is to detect, avoid and identify mine threats, reducing the risk to personnel by operating in the minefield as an off-board sensor while the host ship stays outside the minefield boundaries. Knifefish also gathers environmental data to provide intelligence support for other mine warfare systems.
Benefits of Knifefish
- Detects, classifies and identifies volume, proud and buried mines in high-clutter underwater environments
- Allows “plug and play” integration with ship systems and mission modules
- Integrates into multiple ship types
- Provides intelligence support for other mine warfare systems
- Enables rapid mission turnaround time
