Northrop Demos Mine Hunting Platform With Unmanned Surface Vehicle at UK Navy Exercise

Northrop Grumman has demonstrated a mine hunting platform with an Atlas Elektronik-built unmanned surface vehicle at the Unmanned Warrior Exercise hosted by the U.K. navy in Scotland.

The ARCIMS autonomous surface vehicle deployed the Northrop-developed AQS-24B mine hunting tool to perform mine detection, classification and localization functions in a simulated mine field during several mission scenarios at the Royal Navy-sponsored exercise, Northrop said Thursday.

The AQS-24B system has a laser line scanner sensor and a High Speed Synthetic Aperture Sonar platform and is designed to operate at a speed of up to 18 knots.

Alan Lytle, vice president of undersea systems at Northrop’s mission systems business, said the demonstration seeks to showcase how autonomous systems and mine hunting tools can help reduce “mine clearance timeline” and protect naval personnel from mine-related threats.

Northrop’s participation in the Unmanned Warrior Exercise comes two months after the company demonstrated autonomous undersea, surface and aerial vehicles to conduct anti-submarine warfare mission during the U.S. Navy’s Annual Naval Technology Exercise in Newport, Rhode Island.