AEUK completes Unmanned Warrior mine hunting challenge
Atlas Elektronic UK (AEUK) in partnership with Northrop Grumman has completed the Royal Navy sponsored Unmanned Warrior Mine Hunting Challenge in Scotland, UK.
The ARCIMS Mine Hunting Mission System performed several high speed missions gathering high quality AQS-24B towed sonar data within challenging mine hunting conditions.
A key aim for AEUK was to demonstrate ARCIMS as a proven and reconfigurable USV mission system that can perform reliable MCM operations, offering a range of benefits over conventional dedicated ship systems. ARCIMS is already being delivered to the Royal Navy with an influence mine sweeping mission payload.
After a short period of installation ARCIMS was fitted with the AQS-24B high speed synthetic aperture towed sonar and its automated launch and recovery system. ARCIMS demonstrated robust operations in varying sea states whilst acquiring and transmitting real time towed sonar data to the command & control station for ‘in mission’ analysis.
ARCIMS was also fitted with its latest Sense and Avoid system to demonstrate autonomous navigation and safe collision avoidance manoeuvres.
Dave Berry, AEUK MCM Product Manager stated: “As the MCM Theme Industry Lead it was great to witness first-hand the innovation and collaboration of industry, research organisations, the Royal Navy and other international navies. AEUK demonstrated the ability to deliver mine hunting capability into a realistic battle space, with excellent collaborative working with Northrop Grumman. It was fantastic to see the successful installation of the AQS-24B on to ARCIMS in just 4 days, and the robust mine hunting operations in Scotland is a credit to the AEUK and Northrop Grumman joint team.”
Unmanned Warrior 2016, was the largest demonstration of its kind in the UK, and brought together AEUK and around 40 participants from the Ministry of Defence, industry and academia to show the full potential of unmanned systems in a realistic setting.