Navy

When will the US Navy be able to autonomously seek and destroy mines?

The U.S. Navy is racing to field unmanned systems, and while much work remains for distributed, unmanned sensors and missile shooters, one area of unmanned warfare is seeing success: hunting and destroying mines.

Raytheon and Textron are working on a system that, when it’s fielded, will combine a sonar system and mine-killing weapons in one unmanned, remotely controlled system — a noteworthy leap forward for the Navy’s counter-mine efforts and the culmination of its yearslong push to “get the man out of the minefield.”

Ultimately this is the Navy’s long-delayed, much anticipated mine countermeasures mission package destined for the littoral combat ship.

Raytheon’s mine-hunting sonar, the AQS-20, is in the final stages of testing, and the service is close to declaring initial operational capability, which should be this summer, said Randy Brandenburg, a Raytheon business development executive with its Seapower Capability Systems division. The AQS-20, which is remotely monitored and controlled from a manned platform, deploys from an autonomous surface vessel developed by Textron called the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle.