Was looking over at Naval news today and saw this:
Kongsberg Maritime Unveils New HUGIN Endurance AUV - Naval News
Once again, we need to probably take a few lessons from our Nordic allies.
For those not familiar with underwater vehicles there is a bit of a terminology gap between the U.S Navy and our allies. In my opinion.
Most of the European Countries refer to these vehicles as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) while for some reason we in the U.S Navy refer to them as Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV).
Regardless of the terminology (and some may argue about this) they are essentially the same thing. However, the technical approach and reasons for AUV/UUV development are also very different
For the U.S Navy we have tended to focus on the smaller end side of things Mainly REMUS which is manufactured by Hydroid which is in turn an offshoot of a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute project.
Yes there is always RUMINT (rumor intelligence) about what the Submarine Community may or may not be doing (I honestly have no clue) to help augment some of their more sensitive missions Blind Mans Bluff stuff Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage: Sontag, Sherry, Drew, Christopher, Drew, Annette Lawrence: 9781610393584: Amazon.com: Books
But the conventional navy REMUS was an outgrowth of the expensive nature of having large very expensive crewed research ships going out and well doing research. So rather than send a large research ship out, you could pretty much rent a lobster boat, toss a REMUS unit out and let it do its thing.
The basic civilian version generally has the following sensors:
Bathymetry
Temperture
Water Velocities
Salinity
Sound Speed
Optical Backscatter
Diver Visibility
Sidescan Sonar
Fluorescence
And you can add subtract sensors as long as they match the Size Weight Power limitations
Yes, early versions required USBL buoys for navigation if GPS was suboptimal, but better INS and nav systems have made this less of a a requirement
For those whom don't know what a REMUS looks like see below
And they come in several sizes, some are able to be man handled and others require specialized deployment gear.
Generally we have taken the approach to deploy these from smaller surface craft, with the exception of a very large UUV I believe that was manufactured by Bluefin (I actually visited their manufacturing plant back about 15 years ago) we deployed on a trial basis from one of the LCS.
Our friends across the Atlantic got into the AUV business for very different reasons, one of the biggest is to keep track of the sprawling underwater oil and gas infrastructure. Kongsberg Marine has been a big leader in this.
And the Norwegian navy as early as 2004 had already integrated them on their Mine warfare ships. I actually got a chance to see it in action back then while doing an exchange tour with one of our allies. It works and works well.
During OPEN SPRIT 2004 I was part of the planning cell that had to integrate these new technologies into actual real live mine clearance. For those that doen't know OPEN SPIRIT is a mine warfare operation (not exercise) that clears old mines and UXO from the Eastern Baltic.
In short in conjunction with standard MIW technologies these were a game changer.
I have been out of the space for a while but back then the biggest issue was underwater comms and data rates, endurance and the need for really good automated classification of the incoming/recorded data. It was a 2:1 at the time. In short you needed twice the length of time of the mission to go through the data. But I understand comms and data rates have improved.
This is especially true when integrating unmanned surface vehicles the improve data rates - think of a USV operating at the surface which the AUV can connect and download data.
And no its not science fiction the Europeans demonstrated that back in the mid 2000's
In short like many of the U.S Navy projects of the 2000's to very recently that bought into transformationalism (should be a 4 letter word) our allies were busy buying a little testing a little and learning a lot in the AUV section of the battlespace.
Simply put they are way more advanced.
We did sort of buy some knowledge when Hafmid the producer of Gavia was purchased by teledynemarine. I still like the Gavia Platform the best as it is truly modular. However, is suffers from the not designed and made here issue.
I always wonder if Gavia ever could make one of their modules a version of an underwater cluster bomb.
So in short, it appears from my personal opinion we the U.S Navy got left behind as we focused on the CT missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Maybe if we are prepared to buy a FREMM hull we should be prepared to buy a Gavia or Hugin and improve on it.
Just my thoughts here...
update
Poland's MoD procures additional Gavia AUVs - Naval News
The Gavia vehicles will mirror the AUVs previously delivered. The new AUVs will be equipped with the latest EdgeTech 2205 side scan sonars (Edgetech, West Wareham, MA, USA) with a BlueView MB2250 Microbathymetry Module (Teledyne Reson, Denmark), providing simultaneous dual frequency 600 /1600 kHz EdgeTech 2205 side scan sonar with gapfill featured by the BlueView MB2250. Inertial navigation will be provided by the PHINS C5 (iXblue, France) inertial navigation system (INS), aided by a 600kHz Pathfinder DVL (Teledyne RDI, CA, USA). Additionally, the AUVs will be equipped with Cnode modems (Kongsberg Maritime, Norway) for USBL tracking.
With the imaging and navigation sensors listed above, the AUV will be able to gather high resolution, accurately navigated, sonar images while remaining submerged for several hours of continuous operation at survey speeds up to five knots. Each Gavia AUV will be delivered with several field-replaceable battery modules (Teledyne Energy Systems, USA). The combination of sensors ensure that the Gavia AUV is ideal for mine countermeasures (MCM), as well as search and salvage operations, in continental-shelf waters and beyond.
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