Adaptable Boat Launch and Recovery System

An innovative system called Adaptable Boat Deployment and Retrieval System (ABDRS) is proposed to safely handle a variety of current and future crafts and other assets from the boat bay of DDG 1000 class in seas up to sea state 5 conditions. It employs a tethered sled to interface the returning vehicle outside of the boat bay. The sled is purposely designed to be adaptable to different ship hull forms of manned/unmanned vehicles of about 40ft in length. A modular system can be mounted on the sled to deploy and retrieve different classes of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) from Man Portable, Light Weight, Heavy Weight, to Large if needed. Once the vehicle is secured on the sled, the sled will be pulled into the bay and then transported by a conveyor system installed at the bottom of the boat bay. The ABDRS is designed to be operated normally by three sailor