Unmanned undersea vehicle system for weapon deployment

An unmanned undersea vehicle system comprising:

• a remote-controlled, unmanned undersea vehicle having (i) a hull enclosing a weapon compartment including means for receiving a plurality of weapons longitudinally along the length of the vehicle, the hull including doors proximate the weapon receiving means, (ii) an erectable observation mast for obtaining environmental information, (iii) control means for controlling the deployment of the weapon by expelling the weapon from the weapon compartment thence to become fired, and (iv) means operative to provide compensation countervailing a redistribution of the mass of the vehicle which would otherwise occur when the weapon is expelled from the weapon compartment to thereby stabilize the vehicle against effects of expelling the weapon, said countervailing means including a plurality of buoyancy chambers positioned within the hull, each buoyancy chamber located proximate an associated one of the weapon receiving means, each buoyancy chamber being initially empty and having sufficient capacity so that it can be loaded with seawater whose mass approximates mass of one of said weapons, and controllable valve means for controllably enabling seawater surrounding the hull to fill the buoyancy chamber;
• a mother vehicle for generating command information for controlling the control means and for receiving unmanned undersea vehicle status information from said unmanned undersea vehicle and processing it for use in generating the command information;
• and
• a communication link for interconnecting said unmanned undersea vehicle and said mother vehicle to facilitate transfer of command information from said mother vehicle to said unmanned undersea vehicle and to further facilitate transfer of unmanned undersea vehicle status information from said unmanned undersea vehicle to said mother vehicle.