Knifefish is a heavyweight class Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) that is designed for deployment off the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Its 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. The Knifefish UUV provides the fleet mine warfare commander enhanced mine-hunting capability by detecting, classifying and identifying buried mines and mines in high clutter environments. Knifefish also gathers environmental data to provide intelligence support for other mine warfare systems.
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 is a heavyweight class Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) that is designed for deployment off the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Its 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.
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
