Evaluating the Effectiveness of Multiple-Launch Underwater Vehicles in Target Detection and Engagement

The simultaneous operation of multiple acoustic-homing underwater vehicles (UVs) can expand engagement coverage, but concurrent transmissions may also cause cross-UV acoustic interference. This study develops an interference-aware acoustic simulation framework for evaluating simultaneous multiple-launch UVs operation under simplified but operationally relevant conditions. The framework combines time-varying relative geometry generation with active target-echo modeling, passive cross-UV interference modeling, and matched-filter-based suppression within a unified detection process. On this basis, a frequency-separation design criterion is examined using the matched-filter mismatch margin, FL. Within the present simulation setting, near-independent detection performance is empirically maintained when FL is at least 80 dB. The framework is then used to compare single and multiple UVs operation in shallow- and deep-sea environments under representative countermeasure scenarios. The results should be interpreted as comparative trends within the assumed modeling conditions rather than as predictive field-performance metrics. Under these assumptions, multiple-launch UVs operation provides larger benefits when sufficient acoustic independence and spatial diversity are secured, whereas insufficient spectral separation or limited spatial diversity reduces the cooperative advantage. These results illustrate the usefulness of the proposed framework for analyzing both performance gains and degradation mechanisms in simultaneous multiple-launch UVs operation.