As briefly highlighted in the January 2021 issue of Warship Technology, the Royal Navy is moving ahead with phased plans to introduce a new generation of mine countermeasures (MCM) equipments based on maritime autonomous systems. Under Project Wilton, the service has established a peacetime a route survey capability in the Clyde area using a number of existing autonomous assets. Separately, contracts have now been placed for autonomous sweep and mine hunting systems for operational evaluation. The Mine Countermeasures and Hydrographic Capability (MHC) programme has been established by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with the objective of procuring a capability that will progressively replace the current Hunt class and Sandown class mine countermeasures vessels, and the survey ships HMS Echo and HMS Enterprise. The project is founded on the premise that unmanned autonomous systems deployed from comparatively simple steel ships, or from ashore, could deliver both MCM and hydrographic capability.
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