What's next for the Pentagon after the Replicator programme?
Although the Replicator initiative has made several accomplishments, there are still multiple gaps to plug across the US Department of Defense (DoD) and its services.
Two Saab Seaeye Tiger remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have been selected by Sellafield to clear nuclear waste in the radioactive ponds at the Sellafield’s nuclear site, the company announced on 3 October.
The Tigers will work continuously for six months at a time between scheduled maintenance periods.
The Tigers have a thruster working life of 10,000 hours. The ROVs will clean up and empty the legacy storage ponds by collecting and sorting nuclear material, including radioactive fuel bars. The nuclear waste can be buried in about 30cms of sludge, which is radioactive and hazardous.
Weighing 15kg, each fuel bar is nearly one metre long, and is gripped in the middle by the Tiger’s under-slung manipulator, monitored and identified, then transferred to a skip which can be removed from the pond for safer storage in a more modern facility.
Phil Toomey, technical manager at Sellafield, said: ‘Reliability is the key for the health of operators. They must wash down the Tigers during maintenance checks as exposure to radiation for operators is carefully limited, so unplanned downtime will quickly exhaust their safe working period in any one year.’
Sellafield aims to have removed all bulk fuel and sludge from its legacy ponds by 2022.
Although the Replicator initiative has made several accomplishments, there are still multiple gaps to plug across the US Department of Defense (DoD) and its services.
Cummings Aerospace presented its turbojet-powered Hellhound loitering munition at SOF Week 2025, offering a man-portable solution aligned with the US Army’s LASSO requirements.
PDW has revealed its Attritable Multirotor First Person View drone at SOF Week 2025, offering special operations forces a low-cost, rapidly deployable platform for strike and ISR missions, inspired by battlefield lessons from Ukraine.
Teledyne FLIR is highlighting the emerging requirements for 'recoverable and re-usable' loitering munitions across the contemporary operating environment during this week’s SOF Week conference in Tampa, Florida.
High-performance maritime industry player Kraken Technology Group, based in the UK, has used the SOF Week conference in Tampa, Florida this week to debut its K3 Scout uncrewed surface vessel (USV) to the North American market.
Red Cat and Palladyne AI recently conducted a cross-platform collaborative flight involving three diverse heterogeneous drones.