2022 Surface Navy Warfare Symposium: Spotlighting Growth of Unmanned Systems

Video Above: Navy Connects Air, Surface, Underseas Drones

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

The Navy’s new Ford-class carriers, America-class amphibious assault ships, submarines and destroyers are all visible and highly praised for their technological sophistication and performance parameters, in large measure due to innovations from the service and its industry partners. 

Huntington Ingalls Industries, for example, is widely known for its work on carriers, amphibs and submarines, yet there is an interesting and lesser recognized component to HII work lingering beneath the radar. The firm has been engineering and delivering underwater drones to the Navy for many years now and performed the first ever submarine-launched undersea drone as far back as 2015. 

REMUS Undersea Drone

One such program, for instance, is HII’s REMUS undersea drone which was the first UUV in history to be launched from a submarine in history.

“In 2015, the U.S. Navy launched a REMUS 600 from a dry deck shelter of a Virginia-class submarine – this was the first UUV in history to be launched from a submarine,” Duane Fotheringham, president of unmanned systems for HII’s Technical Solutions division, told Warrior in a written statement. 

In subsequent years, the Navy has launched several undersea drones from submarines, including some from submarine missile tubes. The REMUS drone class, which has been in existence for 20 years, to include the REMUS 100, REMUS 300, REMUS 600 and large REMUS 6000.