The UK and France's new AI drone could revolutionize the dangerous work of clearing naval mines

Yahoo

20-03-2025

The UK and France have taken delivery of an AI-driven naval mine-hunting system.
The MMCM uses autonomous systems for mine detection, removing the need for crewed ships.
Naval mines create complex threats, making autonomous systems advantageous.
The UK and France have taken delivery of an AI-powered system that uses drone boats to target naval mines, which represent one of the most complex security problems facing shipping and maritime trade.
French defense company Thales announced the delivery of the first of four Maritime Mine Counter Measures systems to France in February, and another to the UK — also the first of four — on Friday.
Thales said MMCM's modular system allows for the detection and neutralization of naval mines without the need to send sailors into danger on crewed ships.
The two countries paid a combined $468 million for the system.
Laying naval mines is a relatively inexpensive act that can have hugely expensive consequences on world trade.
Mines laid as part of the Russia-Ukraine war have become a worrying problem for shipping lanes in the Black Sea.
While landmines tend to stay in one place, naval mines can sit at any depth and can become unmoored and begin to drift, making them particularly dangerous.
The problem is so intractable that the term "demining" doesn't even apply — the term at sea is "mine countermeasures."
Matthew Morrison, Mine Countermeasures Delivery Director for Thales in the UK, told BI that "the transportation of the food and the energy sources for our homes — is under threat more than any time since WWII."
Remote vehicles and drones are already used in naval mine countermeasures operations, but generally in combination with conventional crewed ships. Thales says its AI-powered, autonomous system can streamline the process.
To map the area and locate mines, an advanced sonar is towed along the water by a 39-ft surface drone that can be controlled via the system's portable operations center, either on land or at sea up to 14 miles away.
Once a mine has been detected, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, can be sent to neutralize it, under the control of personnel at the operations center.
"These vessels are fitted with AI automatic target detection and recognition," which significantly speeds up the process, Morrison said.
"The quantity of data operators have to process would swamp a human," he added.
The UK's Royal Navy reported a successful trial of the system's drone prototype in Scotland's Firth of Clyde late last year.
According to Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, the new tech is "pretty significant," as it's among one of the first truly autonomous systems to be fully operational.
This offers several advantages, he said, noting the efficiency gains of AI. "But a more important factor is it provides stand-off," he added.
Naval mines are often clustered in or near active conflict zones, such as the port of Odesa in Ukraine, or the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water through which a third of the world's oil flows and which has long been threatened by Houthi forces.
In places like this, "the threat posed by naval mines overlaps with the threat posed by things like anti-ship cruise missiles," Kaushal said, adding that this is "obviously a pretty significant challenge for traditional mine countermeasures vessels."
He said that despite its price tag, the new system is likely cheaper than traditional mine countermeasures vessels, "and there's also the additional advantage of not having to worry as much about losing crews."
Read the original article on Business Insider