Expeditionary Maritime Mine Countermeasures

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is actively seeking new and novel technologies for the design of low cost, miniaturized, expendable payloads to be mounted within Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUV’s) for expeditionary maritime Mine Counter Measure (MCM) missions. UUV payloads for MCM influence systems are desired in one or more of the following modalities: a) Pressure, b) Seismic, c) Magnetic, d) Electric, and/or e) Acoustic. The proposed Phase II extension will investigate two separate UUV-MCM modalities: 1) Magnetic field Influence MCM systems (M-MCM) and 2) Electric field Influence MCM systems (E-MCM). During the Phase II DARPA SBIR investigation, e2P designed, fabricated, tested, and delivered three separate magnetic payloads to the NSWC-PC: Code X12, based upon our proprietary low cost, expendable magnet array.  During the Phase II investigation, a safety issue was identified and communicated to DARPA, which if not addressed could negatively impact the launching and storage operations of e2P’s proposed M-MCM payload.  To address the potential safety issue, a simple “engineering technique” which reduces the stray B-field was investigated using both computer simulations and subsequently verified via experimental measurements.  The implementation of this technique into a new prototype M-MCM assembly will be the first main goal of this Phase II extension effort.  The second main goal of the proposed Phase II extension effort, lasting approximately 14 months, is to design, fabricate, test, and deliver a single modality electric-field (E-field) payload for use in E-field Mine Countermeasures (E-MCM). Using identical geometrical constraints and a similar technical approach to our low-cost, expendable, single modality M-MCM payload design, the proposed E-MCM payload will also be single modality to reduce costs and complexity of the design