HII Demonstrates Automated Shipboard Launch and Recovery for REMUS Robotic Submarines
Defense manufacturing giant Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has successfully demonstrated its Sea Launcher automated system, performing the first fully autonomous ship-based launch and recovery of a REMUS autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The milestone, announced by Mission Technologies President Duane Fotheringham, proves a critical capability for safer, more flexible manned-unmanned teaming in contested maritime environments.
Imagine a robotic submarine slipping silently into the water from a ship’s deck, completing a hazardous mission below the waves, and then returning to be plucked from the sea—all without a single sailor having to handle a line or brave the rail. This vision of seamless human-robot teamwork is now an operational reality. HII, the nation’s largest military shipbuilder, has successfully tested its integrated Sea Launcher system, showcasing a fully automated process to deploy and retrieve its battle-proven REMUS UUVs. This breakthrough tackles one of the most persistent logistical challenges in naval robotics: the risky, manpower-intensive, and weather-dependent task of getting unmanned vehicles into and out of the water.
“This is proven technology applied in a highly relevant shipboard configuration,” said Duane Fotheringham, president of HII’s Unmanned Systems business group. The demonstration validated an end-to-end autonomous sequence using a vehicle configured for real-world conditions. The significance is profound. Automated launch and recovery drastically reduces physical risk to sailors, expands the operational window into higher sea states, and shortens the timeline between missions. In a contested environment, keeping sailors safe below decks while machines handle dangerous work is a major force multiplier.
The REMUS vehicle family is no laboratory prototype. It is one of the world’s most widely deployed AUVs, trusted by more than 30 navies for critical missions like mine countermeasures, undersea survey, and intelligence collection. Its success has been proven in thousands of operations. What HII has now done is integrate this mature, trusted “payload” with a new, smart “loader.” The Sea Launcher system provides the seamless physical interface between the REMUS and the ship, whether that ship is a crewed destroyer, a littoral combat ship, or one of HII’s own ROMULUS family of Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs).
This integration is a key step toward the Pentagon’s vision of a distributed maritime operations network. In this future, manned ships act as motherships and command nodes for swarms of unmanned systems on, above, and below the surface. A destroyer could launch a REMUS from its automated hangar to covertly map a hostile seabed for mines, while simultaneously directing USVs on the surface and drones in the air. “This demonstration reinforces the value of REMUS within a distributed maritime operating model,” Fotheringham added. “Whether operating alongside manned platforms or coordinating with other unmanned systems, REMUS provides commanders with a reliable and flexible capability they already know and trust.”
Looking ahead, HII plans to continue this integration work, pairing the REMUS and Sea Launcher system with its ROMULUS USVs. This creates a powerful, scalable unmanned team: a surface vessel that can autonomously transit to an operational area and then serve as a stable platform to deploy and recover subsurface drones. By solving the complex launch-and-recovery puzzle, HII isn’t just demonstrating a new piece of hardware; it is unlocking the full, practical potential of robotic undersea warfare for the U.S. and its allies.