Paris: Thales will provide the French Navy with its first production version of an autonomous mine-hunting system by the end of the year as a first step to fully remote mine warfare, with the first system for the UK’s Royal Navy following in early 2025, the company said.
France and the UK are moving to stand-off mine countermeasures, a choice also made by the Netherlands and Belgium, while others including Italy and Germany are sticking with crewed minehunter vessels augmented by remote vehicles and drones, said Chris Cunnell, the Thales product line manager for autonomous mine countermeasures.
“Navies are going one of two routes,” Cunnell said at the Euronaval industry show outside Paris last week. “They’re either going to complete standoff – UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, the US are all going a very similar route: They want to have crew outside of the minefield. Other navies have a philosophy that they continue to want to have a crewed mine-hunting capability, so that’s a vessel that will go into the minefield.”
The fully remote option has only now become really possible, according to Cunnell. Thales spent nearly 10 years developing the system it is delivering to France and the UK, and started sea trials towards the end of 2020.
The Dutch and Belgian navies will be the primary users of the systems, the company announced in a statement.
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