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Riptide™ family of autonomous unmanned undersea vehicles

Incubating undersea mission s... Dive into the wet world of unmanned underwater vehicles. Learn how BAE Systems’ newest endeavor, Riptide, is making waves in the undersea market.

Combining best-in-class hydrodynamics, ultra-low power processing, and new energy technologies, BAE Systems brings next-generation capability to the autonomous UUV market.

BAE Systems’ Riptide™ family pairs industry-disrupting autonomous undersea platforms with world-class sensor and electronic payloads to create unmatched, highly adaptive UUVs for any undersea mission.

By combining best-in-class hydrodynamics, ultra-low power processing, and game changing new energy technology, BAE Systems brings next-generation capabilities to the unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) market. Our mission agnostic, modular system design enables easy modification for various development needs. This advanced design is optimized for high efficiency, with the best hydrodynamic signature in its class.

It’s not just what’s under the sea. It’s how you respond to it.

Our Riptide family of autonomous UUVs provides a sustainable, scalable, and affordable solution for developers of autonomy and behaviors, power systems, subsea sensors, and new payloads. The industry-leading range, endurance, and flexibility of the platforms bring these technologies to new depths, enabling greater awareness, deeper insights, and mission dominance under the sea. Click “Advanced maritime mission provider” below to learn more about our undersea mission system payloads, providing critical capabilities that include autonomy, navigation, SIGINT, acoustic and RF communications, sensor processing, RF EW, acoustic IFF, active acoustics, and more.

Unmatched UUV performance for most size, mission, and budget specs

Matching our autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to the mission system capabilities specified by our customers starts with providing our industry-leading UUV designs in a range of mission-appropriate sizes and depth ratings. Our current standard models include:

Micro-UUV^® – 4.875” diameter, 25 lbs. base weight
UUV-7 – 7.5" diameter, 65 to 120 lbs. base weight
UUV-9 – 9.375” diameter, 120 to 240 lbs. base weight

Our new 12" diameter model UUV-12, is now in development and will launch with respect to the deployment timeline of its primary client, a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense (USDoD). We also can build completely custom models. And no matter which models are called for, we have the expertise and resources to outfit them to meet any specified mission demands.

Nautical miles ahead of our competitors.

Featuring the most efficient power system designs in the unmanned undersea vehicle industry, BAE Systems’ Riptide family of UUVs can run longer or use more commonly-accessible battery supplies than other UUVs. That means the Riptide family of unmanned undersea vehicles are capable of longer and/or more complex missions than our competitors when carrying equivalent payloads.

Standard configurations, extraordinary adaptability.

BAE Systems has developed standard, mission-focused system configurations for our UUVs that meet a broad range of defense, security, commercial, and research applications. Our UUVs and sensor packages can be used for seabed surveillance, harbor protection, intelligence collection, infrastructure surveillance, oil and gas survey, mine countermeasures, and more.