Navy

The Navy wants new tools for launching robots from torpedo tubes

Every torpedo tube is the portal between the dry storage of some useful payload, and the wet medium through which that payload will travel to its ultimate destination. It is also, and this is the more important bit, a fixed size, which constrains exactly what the Navy can put inside and launch from the tube. A new project by the Office of Naval Research seeks to find a way around that limitation.

Specifically, the Navy is looking for a way to use torpedo tubes to launched Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, or UUVs. The immediate answer at the heart of a Small Business Innovation Research request is a “UUV Sabot System,” or UUVSS. The ultimate design will be defined by constraints. First, there’s the dimensions of the torpedo tube: 21-inch diameter, 25-feet-long, and ending in an “ocean interface.” The sabot is to be a guide through that passage and transition, separating from the vehicle once the vehicle has left the tube.

The sabots can be either expendable or reusable, which will alter their function in a key way. ONR wants expendable sabots to eject from the torpedo tube alongside the underwater robot, and the reusable ones to remain in the tube through the launch and then be recovered internally. The sabot will have to accommodate sea drones that are 12-inches and 18-inches in diameter, and do so with launches at depths of up to 100 feet below the surface.