MINE NEUTRALAIZATION MINITORPEDO SYSTEM

Benthos has proprietary technology that can provide small, high performance thrusters for use on undersea systems. Benthos, Inc. proposes a development effort to replace the thruster technology, developed in the 1970s, currently in use on U.S. Navy undersea vehicles, with state-of-the-art thrusters based on this technology. Test prototype vehicles outfitted with thrusters incorporating this technology achieved outstanding thrust performance. Benthos proposes to apply this technology to thrusters which can inexpensively and readily be implemented on existing U.S. Navy assets. Benthos proposes a conservative, low risk, two-phase development program. A Phase I study will collect and evaluate data to determine an optimum design configuration, fully compatible with an existing vehicle. Phase I will include an anlysis of the performance improvements that can be expected when thrusters of this design are applied to the selected vehicles. Phase II includes the fabrication of prototype thruster assemblies and in-water testing to verify the predicted performance improvements. Prototype thrusters would be made availaable for further operational testing. It is anticitpated that the tooling used to produce the prototype thrusters during Phase II will be suitable for immediate use in Phase III production, allowing rapid phasing in to service of the fully developed high performance thrusters.