Taking the man out of the minefield: MHC programme swims ahead

摘要

Plans to develop a next-generation Mine Countermea-sures and Hydrographic Capability (MHC) for the UK Royal Navy (RN) have begun to advance down a number of tracks following the award of contracts in early 2015 for three off-board system technical demonstrators. Atlas Elektronik UK (AEUK) has been selected by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to design and build a prototype multi-influence mine-sweeping system deployed from an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). Secondly an Anglo-French industry team led by Thales has been funded, to undertake the initial stage of a French/UK (FR/UK) Maritime Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) demonstrator programme intended to prove a 'system of systems' capable of performing end-to-end mine detection, classification, identification and neutralisation. Finally, systems and software house SeeByte has been contracted to deliver an autonomy demonstration system to the MoD.