General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) has inaugurated its uncrewed undersea vehicle (UUV) Manufacturing and Assembly Center of Excellence (CoE) facility in Taunton, Massachusetts, US.
The new repurposed manufacturing space at the company’s Taunton facility will provide assembly, integration and testing capabilities for GDMS’ Knifefish and Bluefin Robotics UUVs.
Knifefish mine countermeasure (MCM) UUV is designed and built by GDMS’ subsidiary Bluefin Robotics to improve the US Navy’s mine hunting capability.
This UUV is capable of detecting, classifying and tracking both buried mines and mines in high-clutter environments in multiple simulated minefields.
Meanwhile, GDMS’ family of Bluefin Robotics products comprises UUVs and associated technologies that provide a wide range of underwater sensor capabilities for global defence, commercial and scientific customers.
GDMS Maritime and Strategic Systems business vice-president and general manager Carlo Zaffanella said: “Opening this manufacturing and assembly facility allows us to leverage the highly skilled and extremely experienced Taunton workforce.
“We have expanded our maritime operations to include the Taunton UUV Manufacturing and Assembly Center of Excellence to produce our existing best in class small and medium UUVs and allow for additional expansion space for growth on future UUV programmes of all sizes.
“This location was specifically selected to provide additional capacity that will allow for larger scaling and optimisation of UUV production with purpose-built manufacturing cells, fixtures, and special test equipment, while maintaining proximity to our Bluefin Robotics Engineering Team in Quincy.”
Besides the new UUV CoE, the Taunton facility is also engaged in the several communications capabilities for the US Army.
The facility also provides engineering, manufacturing and production support for many GDMS programmes.
