Huntington Ingalls Industries Unmanned Systems, Pocasset, Massachusetts, received a $37 million firm-fixed-price contract modification on May 7, 2026, under existing contract N00024-23-C-6308 for continued production and support equipment deliveries of the Lionfish Small Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., issued the modification. Work is performed at Pocasset, Massachusetts (99 percent) and Hampton, Virginia (1 percent), with performance through May 2027. The modification extends a production ramp that began with the Navy's formal designation of Lionfish as its Small UUV program of record in 2023 and sustains delivery flow during a period when the Pacific Fleet and Atlantic Fleet are both expanding operational deployment of small unmanned undersea vehicles across submarine and surface combatant platforms to support mine countermeasures and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission sets that would otherwise require risking manned platforms in contested littoral environments.
Program Background
The Lionfish is the Navy's Small Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program of record — a man-portable, battery-powered UUV designed for mine countermeasures, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions launched from submarine torpedo tubes and surface combatants. The vehicle is roughly 12.75 inches in diameter, matching the standard torpedo tube dimension used across Virginia-class submarines and the legacy Los Angeles class, enabling launch without dedicated external handling equipment. Recovery can be performed by the launching platform through the same tube or by a surface vessel, making Lionfish operationally versatile across multiple ship types without requiring specialized deck machinery or additional crew billets beyond the UUV operator qualification.
The vehicle's sensor payload bay is modular, supporting interchangeable payloads that include synthetic aperture sonar for mine detection and bottom mapping, electro-optical cameras for close-range intelligence collection, and environmental sensors for oceanographic data collection that supports acoustic prediction models used by submarines navigating in thermally complex waters. This modularity is central to the program's value proposition: a single vehicle design addresses multiple mission sets, reducing the logistics burden and training pipeline requirements of maintaining separate platform types for each mission category.
The Navy's UUV strategy identifies small UUVs as essential for operations in denied and contested underwater environments where manned platforms face increasing risk from adversary submarines and mine threats. The Indo-Pacific theater presents particular mine warfare challenges: the shallow littoral waters of the Western Pacific are well-suited to adversary minelaying, and Lionfish provides a low-signature capability to characterize mined areas before manned platforms and logistics vessels are committed to transiting those routes during contingency operations.
HII's unmanned systems subsidiary was established following HII's 2021 acquisition of Hydroid Inc. — a pioneer in autonomous undersea vehicle technology whose REMUS series has been in Navy and allied naval service since the 1990s. The REMUS 100, REMUS 600, and REMUS 6000 vehicles established a global commercial and military market for man-portable to large-class UUVs. Lionfish leverages Hydroid's autonomous navigation, acoustic communication, and payload integration heritage, adapted to military-specification environmental hardening and the operational constraints of submarine-launch, including pressure resistance during deep-submergence transit to launch depth and acoustic signature requirements set by the host submarine's noise budget allocation for unmanned vehicle operations.
Operational Employment Context
The Lionfish has completed a series of at-sea demonstration events with operational submarine crews in the Atlantic and Pacific Fleet areas over the past two years, validating launch-and-recovery procedures and refining the operator qualification course curriculum. Feedback from those events shaped design refinements incorporated into current production units, including improvements to the acoustic communication link to increase data return rates in shallow-water environments with elevated reverberation. The Navy's mine countermeasures community has identified Lionfish as a means to begin rebuilding organic mine hunting capability that atrophied following the retirement of the MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter — Lionfish's ability to operate from submerged submarines provides a mine-hunting capability that manned systems cannot replicate in high-threat environments where surfacing is not tactically feasible.
Production and Industrial Base
The Pocasset facility concentration — 99 percent of work value — reflects the specialized nature of UUV manufacturing, requiring precision mechanical assembly, battery management system integration, pressure-vessel qualification testing, and software-hardware validation in a controlled environment. The firm-fixed-price contract structure indicates stable unit costs and a mature production process, a positive indicator for the program's manufacturing readiness level and supply chain stability. The Hampton, Virginia component covers logistics support activities at HII's primary East Coast naval facility hub, which provides proximity to major Atlantic Fleet installations receiving vehicle deliveries and reduces the shipping and handling costs associated with transporting sensitive electronics and pressure-vessel assemblies to fleet users.
Navy program offices have indicated that Lionfish unit production cost has declined on a per-unit basis since the initial contract award in FY2023, consistent with expected learning curve effects in a mature low-volume manufacturing program. The firm-fixed-price structure of this modification captures those cost reductions for the government while giving HII Unmanned Systems the cost certainty needed for workforce and materials planning across the performance period through May 2027.
What It Means for Contractors
- HII Unmanned Systems holds the production contract; tier-2 suppliers providing lithium-ion battery systems, acoustic modems, inertial navigation units, and modular sensor payloads should expect consistent order flow through May 2027 as the production rate sustains current delivery schedules for both submarine and surface combatant platform sets.
- The Navy has signaled interest in expanding SUUV inventory beyond current planned quantities — a future competitive acquisition for next-generation small UUVs is expected in the FY2028–2030 timeframe, and alternative designs from other vendors will be evaluated against Lionfish's operational performance record.
- Foreign Military Sales opportunities for Lionfish to allied navies are under consideration through the State Department's process; Five Eyes partner navies operating Virginia-compatible submarines are the most likely first recipients, and firms supplying Lionfish components should position for increased production volume if FMS cases are approved.
- The modular payload architecture creates a recurring aftermarket: as new sensor technologies mature, the Navy will issue payload integration contracts separate from vehicle production — a structured opportunity for electro-optical, sonar, and communications payload vendors operating outside the core vehicle production contract.