Researchers from the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) tested seabed acoustic sensors for anti-submarine warfare at NATO's Repmus exercise in Portugal. They worked with the Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV).
According to FOI, the sensors are autonomous and battery-powered and can stay deployed for more than two weeks. They detect both surface vessels and underwater vehicles. They send detections to a surface buoy by underwater acoustic communication, so they need no cables to the surface or to shore. The buoy relays the data by radio to shore for data fusion and target tracking. That information then went to the exercise control team.
FOI worked closely with research organisations from Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Canada, which have similar systems. Sweden also brought 28 unmanned systems to this year's exercise, as previously reported by NDS.
— The exercise gives us a lot of new experience and a very large amount of data, said FOI research leader Mathias Andersson.
He said FOI will use data from several underwater vehicles to refine its detection and fusion algorithms.