Click here - to select or create a menu

Naval News

DSEI Japan 2023
  • News
  • Event News
    • SNA 2023
    • Euronaval 2022
    • Indo Pacific 2022
    • Sea Air Space 2022
    • DIMDEX 2022
  • Interviews
  • Videos
  • Advertising
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
Home» News»Sonardyne collaborates MSubs on autonomous naval platforms
MQ-9 STOL
Sonardyne collaborates MSubs on autonomous naval platforms
The MSubs S201 XLUUV is being trialled by the UK's Royal Navy to explore the potential capabilities of large uncrewed underwater vehicles for its future missions.

Sonardyne collaborates MSubs on autonomous naval platforms

MSubs and Sonardyne have signed a strategic partnership to advance the capabilities of long endurance, autonomous underwater platforms for the UK defence sector.

Naval News Staff 10 Mar 2022

Sonardyne press release

The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will see the two companies working to integrate and evaluate Sonardyne’s commercial-off-the-shelf navigation, communications, and imaging payloads into MSubs 9 m-long extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle (XLUUV) to provide naval forces with enhanced situational awareness across the underwater battlespace.

From Plymouth, south-west England, where both companies have research, trials, and manufacturing facilities, Sonardyne will supply and support a suite of its technologies to MSubs. These will include SPRINT-Nav X, a hybrid inertial-Doppler navigation sensor that’s suitable for GNSS-denied environments; AvTrak 6, a long-range tracking, command, and control instrument; and Vigilant, a forward-looking obstacle avoidance sonar (FLS) jointly developed by Sonardyne and sister company Wavefront Systems.

MSubs’ XLUUV has been selected by the UK’s Royal Navy to help it understand the future roles for XLUUVs for surveillance, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) missions, and deliver new capabilities to the organization years earlier than otherwise be possible.

MSubs XLUUV (MSubs image)

In 2021, MSubs and Sonardyne took part in the first phase of the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator’s (DASA) Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle Testbed – Opportunity to Integrate competition, run jointly with the Royal Navy and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). As part of the demonstration, MSubs’ XLUUV used bathymetric data gathered by its Vigilant FLS to navigate in open waters off Plymouth.

Today’s announcement builds on this success, with the two companies targeting further emerging opportunities from the UK’s Ministry of Defence, such as Project CETUS. This will see the design and build of an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) which may one day work alongside the Astute-class attack submarines.


“The integration of Sonardyne equipment on our extra-large AUV is a key factor for our continued success, helping us to move the state of the art forward swiftly. The operator-centric approach to engineering from Sonardyne and MSubs makes it easy to enhance our vehicle performance and reliability through applied research, bringing much needed capability to the underwater domain and greatly reduced timelines and budgets.”


Brett Phaneuf, Managing Director of MSubs

“Our two companies are at the forefront of the development of unmanned platforms and payloads that are reshaping the underwater battlespace playbook; delivering tactical edge to navies and governments facing new, and increasingly capable underwater adversaries. We’re excited to be opening a new chapter of collaboration with the MSubs team, and where better for that collaboration to be centred on than Plymouth, the UK’s marine autonomy city.”


Ioseba Tena, Head of Defence at Sonardyne
Sonardyne 2022-03-10
Tags Sonardyne
Facebook Twitter Stumble linkedin Pinterest More

Related Articles

Sonardyne introduces wireless initiation capability for naval mine disposal

Sonardyne introduces wireless initiation capability for naval mine disposal

Naval News Staff 16 Feb 2022
Sonardyne is aiming to improve the safety and efficiency of naval mine counter measures with the introduction of a secure, wireless underwater initiation capability.
Sonardyne and Wavefront demonstrate obstacle avoidance on UK’s XLUUV

Sonardyne and Wavefront demonstrate obstacle avoidance on UK’s XLUUV

Naval News Staff 04 Nov 2021
Sonardyne and Wavefront, successfully demonstrated their MOAS capability aboard an extra-large, uncrewed, underwater vehicle (XLUUV) built and operated by Plymouth-based MSubs Ltd.
Sonardyne and SeeByte Advance UMS Navigation And Autonomy In Challenging Environments

Sonardyne and SeeByte Advance UMS Navigation And Autonomy In Challenging Environments

Martin Manaranche 02 Jun 2021
Maritime defence technology company Sonardyne and uncrewed maritime systems (UMS) software experts SeeByte have been awarded UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) funding to enhance and extend the future operational capability of autonomous and remotely operated systems in challenging battlespace domains.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Legal / Privacy Policy
About Us
Contact Us

Copyright © 2022 Naval News
All Rights Reserved
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok