The U.S. Navys AN/SLQ-48 Mine Neutralization System (MNS). This vehicle was developed to meet the threat of underwater mines keeping harbors and sea lanes clear of bottom and moored mines with new,intelligent, multisensor fuzing. The vehicle is remotely controlled from a surface ship called a mine hunter. All power,commands,sensor and video information is sent to and from a remote control station via a neutrally boyant umbilical cable providing unlimited endurance. In the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm MNS vehicles completed 127 missions successfully reacquiring mines with no inadvertent detonations. Operational Sequence Once a potential target is found by the mine hunter vessel's search sonar, the mine neutralization vehicle is lowered overboard with the ships crane. Then the vehicle's pilot using the remote station's joysticks,indicators, and displays guides the vehicle toward the target area where the target can be detected on the sonar display. The sonar display is used to further guide the vehicle until the pilot can see the target on the vehicle's TV display. After positive identification is made, the pilot can attach an explosive cutter to the mooring cable of a moored mine or drop destructor near the bottom mine. After deploying the ordnance, the vehicle is guided back to the ship and the ordnance is triggerd by an acoustic signal. The company I work for developed and produces this underwater vehicle. I work in the video production department and when they decided to make a marketing video I talked them into doing a animation of the vehicle's different missions. Because very little footage of this vehicle underwater has been shot and the realistic quality of lightwave it was an easy sell. The 3D model was all done in lightwave 3.0 working with photo's as templates. It took about 40 hrs to complete and is as close to scale us you can get without blueprints. Feel free to use the model and pass it around to other systems. Please keep all Documentation with the model. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or have problems with the model. Ken Van Brocklin 5512 Hunter St. Edina,MN 55436 612-920-4497 or E-Mail om Internet Ken_VanBrocklin@atk.com Installation Objects: Place the MNS directory into LightWave's 3D/Object directory. Scenes: Place the scene files into LightWave's 3D/Scene directory. MNS.scene1 thru 6 are of operational sequences. MNS.scene is for starting a new scene with all objects loaded into correct position at 0 x,y and z. When moving the vehicle select the right forearm as the object to move. Images: Place the image maps into the 3D/Images directory. Note: Do not place the Scene or Image directory from the archive, into LightWaves scene or image directory's.