Non-Subscriber Extract
Clearing the way: UUVs evolve to meet front-line MCM requirements
By Richard Scott
14 February 2008
It is now five years since the first recognised use of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) as part of a live mine countermeasures (MCM) operation. That milestone occurred in March 2003, when US Navy mine warfare elements deployed as part of Operation 'Iraqi Freedom' took the Hydroid REMUS 100 system into the warm, shallow waters of the Northern Arabian Gulf and used its sidescan sonar to systematically map the approaches into the port of Umm Qasr.
The intervening period has seen a handful of navies introduce UUVs into their front-line MCM order-of-battle. Many others have acquired limited numbers of UUVs for trials and experimentation purposes, with most identifying MCM reconnaissance and route survey as their initial interest.
The ability to perform MCM reconnaissance missions in shallow water is important in both expeditionary MCM and in the protection of ports against maritime improvised explosive devices. UUVs are being touted as offering a suitable platform for performing the required reconnaissance tasks.
One advantage for aspiring military users at this early juncture has been their ability to leverage the UUV technology and expertise already resident in an established commercial, scientific and academic community that has many years of operating experience behind it. Thus commercial off-the-shelf technology has provided a firm foundation for early experimentation and operational use in the mine warfare domain.
However, these are still pioneering times and much remains to be done. Operational practitioners caution that the military application of unmanned vehicles in the undersea domain remains in its infancy, and that current feedback from user communities is highlighting the limitations of today's technology as much as it reflects on their underlying promise. Typical complaints include inadequate navigation accuracy (a major complication for target re-acquisition), a lack of credible performance against buried targets and poor sonar picture quality in high-clutter environments.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute SUBTECH 2008 conference in London in January, Commodore John Gower, Director of Equipment Capability (Under Water Effects) in the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), observed that the capability afforded by the current generation of unmanned systems should not be overplayed. "Personally, I remain to be convinced that we are as far along the UUV line as we might think," he told delegates. "Direct links between where we are with UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] and UUVs are largely spurious, and I believe it is too early to bank current capability savings on the future promise of UUVs."
Cdre Gower acknowledged, however, that autonomous unmanned vehicles are likely in the longer term to transform the UK Royal Navy's (RN's) MCM front-line as the portable, organic and dedicated elements of the projected Future Mine Countermeasures Capability enter service. But he also suggested that the technologies required to deliver the capability demanded by the front-line user are still around "a decade away" from maturation.
Accordingly, a plethora of research, development and experimentation programmes are now being enacted across the industry, academia and the defence research community to address the performance shortfalls apparent in the current generation of UUV systems. These efforts are aimed at de-risking and demonstrating a wide range of technologies and techniques with applicability to, amongst others, navigation, endurance, autonomy, communications, sensing and sensor resolution.
Hydroid claims market leadership in the small UUV arena with more than 140 REMUS 100 variant vehicles delivered to defence users worldwide by January 2008. Of these, an estimated 70 per cent are being utilised for MCM applications.
The REMUS (an acronym of Remote Environmental Monitoring Unit) product line was originally developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to conduct coastal surveys, and then later improved for military use with support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the US Special Operations Command. Hydroid itself was established in 2001 to market, manufacture and further develop REMUS under exclusive licence to WHOI.
Image: The Talisman M UUV has been engineered specifically for mine reconnaissance, identification and neutralisation, carrying an internal payload of up to four remotely operated Archerfish single-shot mine destructors. (BAE Systems)