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2025-02-02
AUVs & UUVs:Decoding the Deep Blue
Military Robotics - Part 7
Underwater domains present a unique frontier for exploration, research, and security missions. In this seventh instalment of our Military Robotics series, we delve into the critical role of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) in modern military operations.
Independent Ocean Explorers
AUVs and UUVs are transforming underwater operations. As innovation accelerates, their roles expand into undersea communication, environmental monitoring, and disaster response.
An AUV is specifically designed to operate underwater without direct human control. These vehicles are programmed to follow predetermined paths or complete set missions without real-time guidance. AUVs use various sensors to navigate, collect data, and perform tasks in diverse underwater environments such as oceans and lakes.
They are fully autonomous and carry their own power sources, which drive propellers or thrusters to move through the water and power onboard sensors. Most AUVs are powered by specialised batteries, though some may use fuel cells or solar energy. Certain AUVs, like gliders, reduce their energy consumption by utilising gravity and buoyancy for movement.
The defence sector dominates the AUV market, driven by advancements in navigation and payload capacity. Geopolitical tensions and rising demand for surveillance, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare further fuel growth.
Depths Without Limits
The UUV is a wider category that includes any underwater vehicle that operates without a human onboard.
UUVs can be autonomous (like AUVs) or remotely operated (like ROUVs), meaning they can either function independently or be controlled from a distance by an operator. They are used for a wide range of underwater tasks, from exploration to defence, and incorporate subcategories such as AUVs and ROUVs (Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles).
The Asia Pacific region is expected to hold the largest share of the UUV market. India is anticipated to experience the highest growth rate for UUVs in this region. This can be attributed to the presence of numerous manufacturers and the increasing investments in the development and deployment of various underwater drones.
The main difference between AUVs and UUVs lies in their control and functionality.
AUVs, a subset of UUVs, operate fully autonomously, following pre-programmed routes without human intervention. UUVs encompass both AUVs and ROUVs, with ROUVs typically tethered and remotely controlled in real time. While all AUVs are UUVs, not all UUVs are AUVs, as UUVs can function autonomously or under remote operation.
Manual Subsea Mastery
ROUVs are a subclass of UUVs designed to replace humans in underwater tasks, especially in challenging conditions. Primarily used for educational or industrial missions, they are manually controlled by operators to perform tasks such as surveillance and patrolling.
Due to their design, they are not capable of autonomous operation.
In addition to cameras, actuators, and sensors, they often include a “gripper” for handling objects, which can affect the vehicle’s weight distribution and necessitate continuous manual control.
In some cases, ROUVs require additional support due to the critical nature of the tasks they perform. For instance, the US Navy developed the Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System (SRDRS), capable of rescuing up to 16 people from depths of 2,000 feet.
Given the life-saving role of such large vehicles, operators are required to be present during their missions.
Growing Use of UUVs
UUVs, equipped with innovative devices and payloads, are invaluable for ocean research, seabed mapping, and my countermeasures. They detect, classify, and neutralise underwater mines, covering large seafloor areas and creating detailed maps for precise disposal. They also excel in covert operations, delivering specialised payloads, and are used in reconnaissance, surveillance, and anti-submarine warfare. With imaging technologies, sonar, and high-resolution sensors, they gather intelligence and provide real-time situational awareness.
Oceanic Breakthroughs
UUVs are also advancing in self-navigation and object manipulation, especially for commercial use. Current limitations include reduced battery life at greater depths and the need for human intervention to replace or recharge batteries.
As demand grows for longer-lasting, faster UUVs with enhanced sensors, efficient energy solutions are critical. Innovations like WiBotic’s wireless power transfer aim to extend mission durations. Once used mainly for anti-submarine training, UUVs are now expanding into broader military applications.
Let’s explore some of the most promising AUVs and UUVs making waves:
Surrogate-W: Submarine Ally
Russia’s Rubin Design Bureau introduced Surrogate-W, an advanced extra-large UUV at Army 2022. Designed to support manned submarines, it builds on the earlier Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) target Surrogate.
Weighing 40 tonnes, it features a Li-ion battery offering a range of up to 800 miles and can recharge on a mother ship or at underwater stations. A fuel cell power plant is under development.
Surrogate-W enhances submarine stealth by handling tasks like communication and sonar use. It acts as a data gateway, relaying information between submarines and satellites.
The UUV also conducts ice reconnaissance, mine hunting, and autonomous searches for ships and submarines, allowing the submarine to focus on other tasks.
Additionally, it can imitate a submarine’s movements to distract enemies and serve as a target during ASW exercises. It uses acoustic countermeasures to simulate complex tactical scenarios, aiding in anti-submarine warfare system evaluations.
Another prominent feature is its ability to imitate a submarine it covers. The Wingman can lure opposing forces away from the Leader, distract them or to take all the heat.
The new Surrogate-W, same as the first version, may be used as a target during ASW exercises, bringing the cost down and relieving manned submarines for their operational duties.
Echo Voyager: Multi-Mission Marvel
Boeing’s Echo Voyager is a groundbreaking UUV, capable of multi-mission operations for extended periods without human contact. Its advanced autonomy allows it to operate independently for months, even in congested waters.
With a range of 6,500 nautical miles on a single fuel module, Echo Voyager boasts remarkable navigational accuracy using Kalman filtered INU, Doppler Velocity Logs, depth sensors, and seafloor long baseline transponders.
Fully autonomous and host ship independent, it offers extensive payload capacity and is set to play a pivotal role in future underwater operations.
Orca Sets Standards
The Orca XLUUV (Extra Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle), developed by Boeing, is an advanced iteration of the company’s Echo Voyager.
It is designed to meet the U.S. Navy’s rigorous requirements for extended endurance, diverse operational functions, and autonomous capabilities.
With a similar range of 6,500 nautical miles, it can operate for months without human intervention, making it ideal for long-duration missions like seabed warfare, reconnaissance, and surveillance.
Featuring a modular design, the Orca XLUUV has a 34-foot payload section capable of carrying up to eight tonnes of equipment, offering versatility. Its advanced navigation system, which includes a Kalman-filtered Inertial Navigation Unit and Doppler Velocity Logs, ensures precise directional accuracy.
Powered by a hybrid system of batteries and diesel generators, the Orca is fully independent of host ships, capable of launching and recovering pierside, without the need for a support vessel.
At 51 feet long, it is set to revolutionise naval operations with its flexibility and endurance. The U.S. Navy is collaborating with Boeing to scale production, with planned procurement ramping up through FY2029.
Iver4: Versatile UUV Power
The Iver4 Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV), developed by L3Harris, offers multi-mission flexibility to meet complex maritime demands. Designed with continuous feedback from the U.S. Navy, the Iver4 was created to support a range of missions, from submarine operations to explosive ordnance disposal. Its versatility is enhanced by a nine-inch diameter, modular design, and interchangeable payloads like cameras and sonars.
The Iver4 900 offers up to 20 hours of runtime with its standard NiMH battery, and up to 80 hours with an aluminium-water power source. It features a no-tool design for easy payload swapping, an open interface for integration of specialised sensors, and exceptional geolocation accuracy.
The clean power architecture ensures low electromagnetic interference for clear target detection in various underwater environments. This compact, flexible UUV enables operators to conduct effective missions with fewer resources, delivering enhanced operational efficiency.
A18-M AUV: Precision in Depth
Thales and Exail have been selected by the French defence procurement agency (DGA) to deliver the A18-M AUV as part of the SLAMF programme, aimed at renewing the French Navy’s mine warfare capabilities.
The A18-M, designed for underwater mine countermeasures, is capable of operating autonomously for up to 24 hours at depths of 300 metres. It is a compact, mid-size AUV with exceptional payload capacity and is easy to deploy and operate from various ships, including non-dedicated vessels.
It is equipped with high-performance sonar payloads, including synthetic aperture sonar (SAS), which provides high-resolution imagery for detecting and classifying sea mines, IEDs, and pollutants.
With an area coverage rate of 2 km² per hour, the A18-M can cover large areas quickly and safely, with superior image quality compared to legacy systems. It is also less affected by waves, ensuring more stable operations.
The AUV can adapt its operating depth to environmental conditions, minimising blind zones caused by sound speed stratification. It can be integrated into larger unmanned systems like Exail’s UMIS (Unmanned MCM Integrated System), allowing for collaborative operations in swarms, reducing mission duration and enhancing overall efficiency.
Double Eagle Advantage
The Double Eagle family by SAAB offers a cost-efficient, reliable, and safe solution for Mine Countermeasure operations, ensuring operational effectiveness in challenging underwater environments. These systems are designed to handle modern mine reconnaissance and disposal, providing Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) that operate in extreme conditions and counter advanced mines.
With three base configurations and mission-specific payloads, the Double Eagle family is highly adaptable to a wide range of operational needs.
The Double Eagle Mine Disposal System (MDS) is the market leader for non-expendable mine disposal. It has been continuously upgraded and remains the first choice for many navies worldwide. It features a modular, flexible approach that ensures effective operations in diverse mission scenarios. It can be launched and recovered using a standard ship’s crane, and its integration into any combat management system ensures streamlined MCM operations. Powered by a tether, the system benefits from practically unlimited endurance.
The Double Eagle SAROV enhances the family by offering autonomous capabilities. In the SAROV configuration, the vehicle serves as both an AUV for detection, classification, and identification and as an ROV for mine disposal.
SAROV’s robust design allows for exceptional performance with significant range and endurance, making it ideal for various missions such as search operations, underwater surveys, and Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA).
It can operate with either a fibre optic tether for real-time communication over long distances or a combined power and communication tether, or even without a tether for extended range.
D19: Adaptable Underwater Power
D19 is Naval Group’s first autonomous underwater military drone designed to equip surface vessels and submarines. Drawing on its expertise in autonomous underwater vehicles, Naval Group has developed the UUV.
This family of D19 drones features a modular front-end payload, allowing for easy adaptation to a variety of missions. The drone can be deployed for a wide range of tasks, including identification, surveillance, and recognition, electronic warfare, anti-submarine warfare, underwater mobile target operations, mine countermeasures, rapid environmental assessment, and mine laying.
It is built on a F21 torpedo base. This way, the Naval Group takes advantage of its experience accumulated with the development of this torpedo. The D19 is propelled by a Lithium-ion energy section. Already sea proven thanks to the joint effort of Naval Group and the French Navy, it combines long endurance and intelligence.
The French Navy (Marine Nationale) is the launch customer of the D-19.
HUGIN: The Survey Specialist
Kongsberg’s HUGIN AUV offers exceptional remote subsea survey capabilities. These free-swimming AUVs are known for their manoeuvrability and precise stabilisation. Their hydrodynamic shape, accurate instruments, and excellent battery capacity make them ideal for various underwater missions. HUGIN is available in different configurations and depth ratings.
The latest addition, HUGIN Endurance, provides unsupervised shore-to-shore operations over long ranges. It is equipped with a variety of sensors, including the proven Kongsberg Hisas synthetic aperture sonars and EM multibeams for mapping and inspection.
Autonomous decision-making is supported by underwater and surface awareness sensors.
HUGIN Endurance collects high-resolution data without in-mission supervision, utilising Kongsberg’s Sunstone underwater navigation system. This level of autonomy reduces the carbon footprint by eliminating the need for a dedicated support vessel, improving safety by relocating personnel onshore, and expanding operational weather windows.
It builds on 30 years of innovation, offering the most capable solution in the large-diameter AUV market. Designed for extended missions, it can operate for days or weeks without human intervention. The system includes the latest pressure-tolerant Li-Ion batteries, sensor redundancy, and Sunstone inertial navigation for precise operation. Communication is maintained with the remote operating centre through Maritime Broadband Radio (MBR), satellite systems, and surface awareness sensors.
It can also be fitted with side scan sonars, sub-bottom profilers, and other payload sensors for diverse applications.
Bluefin-21: Exploring New Frontiers
The General Dynamics Bluefin-21 is a highly modular autonomous UUV capable of carrying multiple sensors and payloads simultaneously. With its high energy capacity, the Bluefin-21 can operate for extended periods, even at great depths.
While it offers immense capability, it is also versatile enough to be deployed from various ships of opportunity around the world. It is well-suited for a wide range of applications, including search and salvage, archaeology and exploration, oceanography, mine countermeasures, and the detection and disposal of unexploded ordnance (UXO).
It is designed with free-flooded modularity, allowing for easy swapping of payload sections and battery modules for in-field mission reconfiguration.
This feature enables quick access to subsystems for fast turnaround between missions and facilitates in-field maintenance, improving operational efficiency.
As an efficient workhorse, it is a deep-rated UUV capable of executing surveys with demanding requirements that are typically handled by larger, more cumbersome platforms. Its compact size and ability to be launched and recovered from simple A-frames or docking heads make it compatible with ships of opportunity.
For accurate navigation, the Bluefin-21 uses an Inertial Navigation System (INS), with dead reckoning drift typically under 0.1 per cent of the distance travelled, ensuring high-quality data.
REMUS 300 at the Helm
HII’s REMUS 300, selected as the U.S. Navy’s next-generation small UUV (SUUV) in 2022, is designed to enhance distributed maritime operations and perform critical underwater missions.
It is two-man portable UUV with increased modularity and maximum payload flexibility.
The REMUS 300M can conduct Mine Countermeasures (MCM) down to 305 metres, and port and harbour clearance. Using side scan sonar, it surveys large areas autonomously, allowing operators to review the data away from the mine field to identify and classify mine-like objects.
REMUS 300 UUVs are rapidly deployable from any vessel of opportunity and provide large area coverage on a single mission, making them ideal for SAR operations. Side scan sonar and precision navigation provide highly accurate data to locate targets, including downed aircraft and sunken ships.
Common uses include Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA), marine archaeology, offshore oil and gas operations, and renewable energy projects. The system provides optional scalable modular space that allows for the integration of payloads to support customer-defined missions, such as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW).
With the added modularity, it can be reconfigured for different missions, from a 107-pound expeditionary configuration to a 155-pound long- endurance configuration. REMUS 300 has options for 1.5, 3.0 or 4.5 kWh lithium-ion battery sections that correspond to up to 10, 20 or 30 hours of endurance.
Waves Meet Resistance
UUVs face major challenges in underwater survey speed and communication, especially when operating at depths exceeding 200 metres. Electromagnetic (EM) waves struggle to propagate effectively in these environments due to the conductive nature of seawater.
Similarly, free-space optical (FSO) communications are impractical for UUVs because their effective range is limited to very short distances. As a result, UUVs rely on slow-moving acoustic waves for deep-sea exploration, but these signals are impacted by refraction, absorption, and scattering in water.
The immense pressure at great depths worsens these issues, slowing signals and causing noise and echoes.
These communication difficulties demand high power levels for signal transmission and complex signal processing, pointedly increasing the energy requirements of UUVs. Also, environmental disturbances, such as weather changes, waves, wind patterns, and ocean currents, further affect the effectiveness of underwater communication systems.
Ensuring UUV Reliability
UUVs are vital in defence, commercial, and research sectors, performing critical missions with safety and efficiency. However, they are prone to malfunctions caused by hardware failures, software issues, and environmental factors, particularly in high-stakes defence operations.
In defence applications, the reliability of UUVs is especially critical. Failures often stem from design flaws, technological shortcomings, manufacturing defects and operational mistakes.
To mitigate these risks, it is essential to have robust contingency plans in place to manage malfunctions. These plans should include procedures to recover malfunctioning UUVs and return them to base stations for repairs.
Future Beneath the Surface
To sum up, AUVs and UUVs are redefining the future of underwater operations. As innovation accelerates, their roles expand into undersea communication, environmental monitoring, and disaster response. With geopolitical dynamics driving investment, these technologies promise transformative growth. This evolution strengthens maritime security and unlocks the ocean’s vast untapped potential, shaping a new era of underwater capabilities.
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