Thales crosses a milestone at sea
Thales has completed two significant seagoing milestones as part of the opening of the Thales UK Maritime Autonomy Centre at Turnchapel Wharf in Plymouth.
In a major demonstration of capability, Boat Zero – a Thales unmanned surface vessel (USV) – carrying a dedicated sonar payload, was piloted by a crew across the English Channel from Brest to Plymouth, where it was escorted in from a Plymouth-based Thales crew in another USV; Halcyon.
This 150 nautical mile passage was the first or ‘maiden’ offshore cross-channel journey by a Thales USV with a TSAM (Towed Synthetic Aperture Modular) payload embarked. This crossing demonstrates the robustness, reliability, sea-keeping properties and long-range ability of the mine countermeasures-class workboat with its primary sensor payload.
TSAM, a mine countermeasures sonar, is specifically designed for very high resolution imagery to enable in-water object detection and is particularly useful for naval mine detection and classification.
Matt Hunt, UK Maritime Autonomy lead, said: “This was a hugely symbolic event; the first seagoing exchange of USVs between France and the UK’s maritime test centres.
“This trip has proven not only the sea-keeping characteristics and range and endurance capabilities of the Thales MMCM USVs, but also the ability of Thales Group to collaborate between Brest and Turnchapel in their integration, verification, validation and qualification activities for maritime autonomous systems.”
Halcyon was built by Thales and L3 ASV five years ago as an unmanned surface vessel demonstrator, used to demonstrate the potential for unmanned naval mine countermeasures operations, most notably during the exercise Unmanned Warrior in 2016. She is Thales’s first generation USV.
Boat Zero is the next generation USV, built as a test-integration platform for many of the MMCM project’s sub-systems, such as TSAM and the remotely operated mine disposal vehicle. Zero is representative of the final design MMCM USV. Both of these USVs are stepping stones to the completely autonomous system of systems MMCM package.
