ASV to deliver MMCM surface vehicle
ASV has been selected by the Thales-BAE Systems consortium to develop and deliver the first complete operational unmanned mine countermeasures system for the UK/French Maritime Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) requirement, it announced on 15 September.
ASV will provide capabilities proven and validated at sea on its Halcyon Mk 2 multi-role unmanned surface vehicle (USV) to meet the consortium's requirement. Halcyon has already had its full autonomy capability validated in a September 2014 demonstration to the UK Ministry of Defence.
The MMCM programme will see two identical systems evaluated against several predefined operational scenarios.
Following an initial de-risking study, detail design has now begun, and this first official stage - consisting of a design study prior to system build - is scheduled to run until the end of 2016. This will also involve working with the end user to define the requirement and place consideration on other external factors. Stages 2 and 3 will include the system manufacture and demonstrations.
Dan Hook, managing director, ASV, said: ‘Our Halcyon class of multi-role autonomous surface vehicles has been developed over the course of our long standing relationship with Thales to offer the ideal solution to the MMCM programme. Developed from the Halcyon design, the more complex and capable mark II offers greater efficiency, stability and an increased payload capacity.’
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