ASV to Deliver Surface Vehicles for UK-French Anti-Mine Program
Artist's conception of the Halcyon mark II. Image: ASV.
British unmanned surface vehicle maker ASV has been tapped to deliver new vehicles to a joint U.K.-French mine countermeasures program.
The work is being done by a Thales-BAE Systems consortium, which is charged with developing and delivering the first complete operational unmanned mine countermeasures system.
ASV will be providing the mark II version of its Halcyon vehicle, which was validated to the U.K. Ministry of Defence in a September 2014 demonstration.
“Our Halcyon class of multi-role Autonomous Surface Vehicles has been developed over the course of our longstanding relationship with Thales to offer the ideal solution to the MMCM program,” says ASV Managing Director Dan Hook. “Developed from the Halcyon design, the more complex and capable mark II offers greater efficiency, stability and an increased payload capacity.”
The French and U.K. defense ministries are investing in a mine countermeasures program that is focused on autonomous and unmanned systems, and which plans to demonstrate the capabilities of systems provided by industry.
The program plans to create two identical systems that will be evaluated against operational scenarios. The first stage — a design study — has begun and will run through the end of 2016. Follow-on stages will include the construction of the systems and demonstrations of their capability.
