Review of Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Developments 
NEAR-TERM MINE RECONNAISSANCE SYSTEM (NMRS) [4,5,6] 
A significant portion of the Navy’s regional challenges relate to mine warfare in the "littoral 
environment." One mine warfare tool the Navy is developing and fielding is a system designed 
to conduct clandestine, remote, unmanned minefield reconnaissance from a submarine. The 
system under development is the Near-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (NMRS) under a 
"special category" acquisition program for Fleet delivery and use. The NMRS entered 
operational use by the Type Commander (TYCOM) in early Calendar Year 1998 and 
participated in Demonstration II of the Joint Countermine Advanced Concept Technology 
Demonstration (JCM ACTD). 
NMRS is being installed on various platforms, including the USS LOS ANGELES (SSN 688) 
Class attack submarines. The NMRS is a fiber-optic tethered vehicle that is equipped with side- 
scan sonar. The launch and recovery of the reconnaissance vehicle is via a torpedo tube. 
Figure 3. Clandestine Minefield Reconnaissance 
NMRS provides theater commanders with a near-term capability for conducting clandestine 
minefield reconnaissance from a submarine (figure 3). The UUV transits to an area to 
determine if littoral waters are seeded with mines, allowing theater commander to rapidly assess 
probability of mines in the area. A highly accurate NMRS survey precisely locates and classifies 
minelike objects, providing theater commander with detailed information used to estimate 
location of enemy-deployed mine defenses and unmined coastal areas. With this information 
the theater commanders can determine the need for further UUV sortie operations. 
The NMRS incorporates SSN 688 torpedo tube technology hosted on a recoverable UUV with 
multibeam, active search sonar, and side-scan classification sonar. The NMRS consists of two 
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