Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System

The AN/BLQ-11 autonomous unmanned undersea vehicle (formerly the Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS)) is a torpedo tube-launched and tube-recovered underwater search and survey unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) capable of performing autonomous minefield reconnaissance as much as^[1] 200 kilometers (120 mi) in advance of a host Los Angeles-, Seawolf-, or Virginia-class^[2] submarine.

Class overview
Name	AN/BLQ-11
Builders	Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS)
Operators	United States Boeing
General characteristics
Type	Unmanned undersea vehicle
Displacement	1,244 kilograms (2,743 lb))
Length	6 m (20 ft)
Beam	0.53 m (1 ft 9 in)
Height	0.53 m (1 ft 9 in)
Propulsion	Thrusters
Endurance	60 hours (nominal load)
Test depth	1,000 m (3,300 ft)

LMRS is equipped with both forward-looking sonar and side-scan synthetic aperture sonar.

Boeing concluded the detailed design phase of the development project on 31 August 1999. In January 2006, USS Scranton successfully demonstrated homing and docking of an LMRS UUV system during at-sea testing.^[3]

History

The USS Oklahoma City successfully launched the 8 m (20 ft) long vehicle for covert mine countermeasures in September 2005. The USS Scranton conducted 24 test runs in January 2006. In October 2007, USS Hartford conducted further tests.

The U.S. Navy's Mission Reconfigurable UUV System^[4] (MRUUVS) program,^[5] of which AN/BLQ-11 was a part, ended in December 2008 due to technical and engineering limitations.