Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System

Class overview
Name	AN/BLQ-11
Builders	Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS)
Operators	United States Boeing
General characteristics
Type	Unmanned undersea vehicle
Displacement	1,244 kilograms (2,743 lb))
Length	6 m (20 ft)
Beam	0.53 m (1 ft 9 in)
Height	0.53 m (1 ft 9 in)
Propulsion	Thrusters
Endurance	60 hours (nominal load)
Test depth	1,000 m (3,300 ft)

The AN/BLQ-11 autonomous unmanned undersea vehicle (formerly the Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS)) is a torpedo tube-launched and tube-recovered underwater search and survey unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) capable of performing autonomous minefield reconnaissance as much as^[1] 200 kilometers (120 mi) in advance of a host Los Angeles-, Seawolf-, or Virginia-class^[2] submarine.

LMRS is equipped with both forward-looking sonar and side-scan synthetic aperture sonar.

Boeing concluded the detailed design phase of the development project on 31 August 1999. In January 2006, USS Scranton successfully demonstrated homing and docking of an LMRS UUV system during at-sea testing.^[3]

History

The USS Oklahoma City successfully launched the 8 m (20 ft) long vehicle for covert mine countermeasures in September 2005. The USS Scranton conducted 24 test runs in January 2006. In October 2007, USS Hartford conducted further tests.

The U.S. Navy's Mission Reconfigurable UUV System^[4] (MRUUVS) program,^[5] of which AN/BLQ-11 was a part, ended in December 2008 due to technical and engineering limitations.

References

^ "Advanced Pressure-Tolerant UUV Batteries for Fleet Use | SBIR.gov". www.sbir.gov. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
^ USS Virginia SSN-774 - Download Free 3D model by KoreanNavy, 2023-01-11, retrieved 2023-08-23
^ Piggott, Mark O. (3 September 2006). "USS Scranton Completes Successful UUV Test". news.navy.mil. Archived from the original on 25 November 2006.
^ "Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center" (PDF). DTIC.mil.
^ Winchester, C.; Egan, C.; Drozd, D.; Zolla, A.; Westenberger, J. (June 2002). "Performance, safety characterizations and system integration of a large lithium thionyl chloride battery for unmanned undersea vehicles". Proceedings of the 2002 Workshop on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, 2002. pp. 39–43. doi:10.1109/AUV.2002.1177200. ISBN 0-7803-7572-6. S2CID 108856840.