The Remote Minehunting System, or RMS, was developed for the Navy's new littoral combat ship. But the Defense Department's Office of Operational Test & Evaluation says the drone hunting technology was unable to consistently identify and destroy underwater explosives during tests dating back to September 2014.
"The Navy has determined that the RMS' total number of failures and periodicity of failures fall short of the design requirement for the system," said Capt. Thurraya Kent, a spokeswoman for the Navy.
Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for acquisition, has scheduled a review of the program for early 2016. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCni9MCOdv2KUze_TgmF_IVg
The controversial unmanned mine-hunting drone, built by defense giant Lockheed Martin, is supposed to be a key component of the Navy's littoral combat ships.
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In theory, the drone is deployed from the LCS towing sonar detection into suspected underwater minefields. The drone should then identify mines and communicate information about their whereabouts to the ship in real time so the explosives can be avoided or destroyed.But the program has come under fire from lawmakers after a series of testing failures, including continued performance issues and "RMS mission package integration challenges," according to the Defense Department's Office of Operational Test & Evaluation's 2014 annual report.
The drone has continued to experience testing issues in 2015, according to an August 3 memo from Michael Gilmore, director of Operational Test and Evaluation, to Kendall.
"Recent developmental testing provides no statistical evidence that the system is demonstrating improved reliability, and instead indicates that reliability plateaued nearly a decade ago," Gilmore wrote.
