MARITIME MATTERS

摘要

Naval Air Systems Command is testing out a new unmanned cargo delivery platform that can transport small amounts of cargo between Navy ships, and a NAVAIR official said he expects it to become a program of record soon. A team at NAVAIR was able to take the Skyways unmanned aerial vehicle and demonstrate it aboard the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford (CVN-78) after just a few months, and the Navy is highly interested in going beyond that, said Tony Schmidt, director of rapid prototyping, experimentation, and demonstration. Schimdt's team delivered the prototype in October 2020. Once Rear Adm. John Meier, commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic, caught wind of the program, he asked them to deliver the aircraft for testing aboard CVN-78 just three months later. The Navy has wrapped up initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E) for the Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) and expects the platform to be ready for fielding by the end of this summer, according to an official. Capt. Godfrey Weekes, program manager for littoral combat ship mission modules (PMS-420), said initial operational capability (IOC) for the platform is the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, which ends Sept. 30, 2021. The UISS platform is designed for the LCS's mine countermeasures mission package (MCM). It "consists of a mine countermeasures unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and a towed minesweeping payload for influence sweeping of magnetic, acoustic and magnetic/acoustic combination mine types," according to a Navy statement.