The Nuclear Submarine Is Becoming a Drone Mothership: L3Harris, the American technology company and defense firm, will produce Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery (TTLR) systems for use with United States Navy submarines. The systems are designed to facilitate the ingress and egress of remotely operated underwater vehicles, allowing U.S. Navy submarines to recover underwater units without requiring divers to exit the submarine.
The firm won a contract award from the Department of War’s Defense Innovation Unit.
Norfolk, VA. (May 7, 2008)-The Virginia-class submarine USS North Carolina (SSN 777) pulls into Naval Station Norfolk’s Pier 3 following a brief underway period. North Carolina was commissioned in Wilmington, N.C. on May 3, 2008. (U.S. Navy Photo By Mass Communications Specialist 3rd Class Kelvin Edwards) (RELEASED)
Virginia-Class Submarine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
The L3Harris Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery system is compatible with the company’s Iver4 900 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). According to the firm, the Iver 900 can dive to 300 meters and, thanks to its rechargeable Nickel-metal hydride battery, can operate for 20 hours or 40 nautical miles — but range doubles to 40 hours or 80 nautical miles with a Lithium-ion battery, depending on the unit’s payload and underwater conditions.
Capabilities Tested and Ready for Service
The system’s modularity is the key to its usefulness, and the ability to adapt the AUV’s payload and power system for a variety of situations is certainly something the U.S. Navy would like to leverage. In an interview with Seapower Magazine, a naval publication, J.R. Gear, a Vice President and General Manager of Integrated Systems & Encryption for L3Harris, added a few details about the system.
“We try to build it with some modular interfaces that you could have one type of mission one day from a submarine and then swap out the sensor and swap out the batteries and [gain] maybe a little bit more range and endurance or whatever and tailor the vehicle for today’s mission,” Gear said, adding that it is “very adaptable.”
“Whether it swims out with the nose out or backs out, it’s payload dependent on how it leaves,” Gear said. “It literally swims away, performs its mission, and then when it returns, it’s kind of a push of a button and it will swim back into that SAFECAP of the torpedo enclosure,” Gear explained.
“We’ve tested this on several different types of submarines, and I think we’re the first also that have done this on both the United States Navy and the Royal Navy.”
Submarines as Drone Motherships
L3Harris’ TTLR system is, in essence, a sleeve that fits inside a submarine’s torpedo tube, enabling submarines outfitted with the system to operate as drone motherships.
It is not unlike the Loyal Wingman operational concept that the U.S. Navy and Air Force would like to leverage for their airmen.
Rather than sending enormous — and enormously expensive — manned platforms into dangerous airspace and putting human pilots at risk, unmanned Loyal Wingmen platforms instead take on much of the danger themselves, flying into contested airspace to vacuum up information about the battlespace and, in the future, assume an offensive role against manned and unmanned adversary platforms.
In a similar vein, U.S. Navy submarines would, thanks to the TTLR system, send out relatively small unmanned AUVs to conduct a variety of tasks, including reconnaissance, seafloor mapping, countermine operations, manipulation of undersea communication cables, and other operations. In the future, it is possible that similar units could be deployed with explosive payloads, raising the prospect of unmanned systems holding manned adversary submarines and warships at risk.
A Broader Transformation
The introduction of AUV ingress and egress capabilities aboard U.S. Navy submarines is a small but significant step in today’s and future undersea warfare. Submarines have long relied on sonar systems to detect enemy submarines and ships, as well as undersea features to aid navigation. Secondarily, periscopes have helped submarines observe surface activity, though their usefulness has diminished as naval aviation capabilities have matured.
But by incorporating AUVs into operations, U.S. Navy submarines gain a new arrow in their quiver — one that promises to transform underwater operations: additional eyes and ears in the water. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in the near future in which several U.S. Navy submarines deploy several AUVs simultaneously — AUVs that augment the submarine’s ability to detect threats above and below the water and act as a distributed sensor network.
In the future, that sensor network could leverage its own weapons, perhaps onboard explosive payloads.
The U.S. Navy of the future will be increasingly lethal and, thanks in part to this latest piece of technology, increasingly autonomous.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
