at step 72 communications connector 40 on the selected payload is then connected to communication port 36 on the vehicle 10 a program such as first software program 66 is selected at a step 74 from among several payload specific software programs 102 112 122 illustrated in fig3 u2013 6 and loaded into memory 56 via jack 60 at step 75 underwater vehicle 10 is then placed into a torpedo tube not shown and launched from a ship or submarine not shown at step 76 the underwater vehicle operates remotely from the host ship that launches it and may either transmit data to the host ship via a fiber optic or other cable or by radio in some cases the vehicle may operate autonomously with no connection to the host ship and record data onboard for later retrieval the control and retrieval of the underwater vehicle are performed in a conventional manner and these processes do not form a part of the present disclosure when a new payload such as second payload 100 is used first payload 32 is removed from the payload holder 26 and replaced with second payload 100 while second software program 102 is installed in memory.