After successful trials on Halcyon Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), Thales and ASV strengthen their partnership. Both companies have signed an agreement to develop autonomous Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) technology and capability for maritime, civil, security and military domains.

This agreement, which builds on the strong existing relationship and the combined skills and expertise of the two companies, provides world leading, innovative solutions for autonomous maritime requirements.

Key points:

The collaboration has already successfully delivered the innovative Halcyon USV, a key asset of the French - UK Maritime Mine Counter Measures programme (MMCM). Designed and built by ASV, it provides high speed transit, stability, manoeuvrability and endurance.

A recent success is the support provided by Thales, with their partners ASV and SeeByte, to the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in the demonstration of a robust autonomous Mine Counter Measures (MCM) system through a collaborative systems approach. This was part of The Technical Cooperation Programme (TTCP), a multi-national forum for defence, science and technology.

Halcyon, fitted with Thales’s mission management system and integrated with the ASView control system, operated collaboratively in the trials to demonstrate reliable autonomous operations involving complex behaviours in a range of scenarios and sea state conditions.

These trials completed operator planned missions controlled from a remote operations centre, providing operator oversight and control over a communications link. It also showed how a USV can work autonomously with a multi-national squad of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs). These successful trials represent a major milestone in Thales’s roadmap to deliver robust autonomous USV operations.

The two companies are collaborating on the delivery of the French – UK Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) contract, a programme which is key to the transformation of mine countermeasures capabilities and the future operational use of unmanned naval systems.