New Wave Media

ASV, a U.K. based supplier of unmanned and autonomous surface vehicles, informs it has been enlisted as part of the Thales-BAE consortium to develop and deliver the first complete operational unmanned mine countermeasures system for the U.K. and French Maritime Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) requirement.

 

ASV said its USV capability has been proven and validated at sea through the Halcyon multirole USV. The vehicle’s full autonomy capability was validated in a demonstration to the U.K. MOD in September 2014. 

 

“Our Halcyon class of multirole Autonomous Surface Vehicles has been developed over the course of our long standing relationship with Thales to offer the ideal solution to the MMCM program. Developed from the Halcyon design, the more complex and capable mark II offers greater efficiency, stability and an increased payload capacity,” said ASV Managing Director Dan Hook. 

 

Maritime autonomy is recognized as a key area of technological development reflected by the investment being made by the U.K. and French MOD into the development of an MCM solution centered on autonomous and unmanned systems.

 

Broken down into various stages, the program output will be two identical systems for evaluation against several predefined operational scenarios. Following an initial de-risking study, detail design has now begun. This first official stage comprising a design study prior to system build is scheduled to run until the end of 2016. This will also involve working with the end user to define the requirement and place consideration on other external factors. Stages 2 and 3 will include the system manufacture and demonstrations.