64 Insight | Defence systems The CXT has been tested to cover 50 km between charges of its battery pack, and up to 450 km between refills of its fuel tank, the hours of operation depending on the missions and terrains it is applied to. The XT has been tested to travel up to 750 km between refuelling, with the two larger Mission Masters both capable of up to 40 kph. A platform on top of the vehicle can be configured with various payloads; Rheinmetall designs the platform with common mounting plates for bolting on or removing mission equipment within a few minutes. The payloads include pallets for carrying goods, soldiers’ equipment or wounded personnel, and the tests in Australia and Estonia have included trials and demonstrations of how medevac missions would be carried out in different weather conditions and terrains. “All the Mission Masters are amphibious, enabling them to travel through water at up to 5 kph or up to 4 kph for the CXT,” Diniz adds. “Also, they all are equipped with the Path autonomy kit or A-kit, the hardware and software architecture powering the UGVs’ intelligence, which can be integrated in other vehicles for logistics or other purposes like personnel transports and autonomous convoys.” Maritime mine countermeasures Uncrewed systems for naval customers continue to evolve towards faster, safer and more cost-effective operations. For mine countermeasures (MCM), this means configuring USVs and AUVs for an array of capabilities they can execute in parallel with each other, so that no matter the nature or size of the minefield, navy personnel and crewed ships can keep to a safe distance. Exail has taken advantage of that need from naval integrators for parallelised solutions. “We have two USVs in our portfolio, the DriX, which is a pure civil design, and the Inspector 125, which is dedicated to MCM missions,” says Antony Penn, commercial director for maritime systems at Exail. “The Inspector 125, when equipped with an Exail FLS 5 sonar, can perform the initial mine detection phase, before launching other uncrewed systems like our A18-M AUV, Seascan and K-Ster ROVs into the mined area so that the crewed ships can remain out of the danger zone.” The Inspector 125 is a 12 m-long, 3.85 m beam-width vessel built largely from composite materials and positioned as a larger counterpart to the 9 m Inspector 90 (investigated in issue 6, February/March 2016). It has been selected by the Belgian and Dutch navies as part of their nextgeneration MCM system, and is designed for a fully loaded weight of around 19 t, a 13.355 t empty weight, and for up to 2500 kg of payload on its main deck, which has a surface area of 23.6 m2. The DriX (covered in issue 25, April/ May 2019) was originally designed for commercial operations but has also been trialled in surface and seabed monitoring, for example. These took place during operations with Task Force 59, the US Navy’s lead group for testing and integrating uncrewed systems to enhance maritime defence capabilities, with a view towards developing a military version. “In addition to the A18-Ms and the FLS5, the Inspector 125 can also pull a T18-M towed system equipped with Exail’s Umisas sonar, to cover large areas and provide real-time sonar data to MCM operators through the USV’s data link,” Penn notes. Using AUVs can enable more covert and potentially closer surveys of mines than USVs, so the A18-M is designed for up to 24 hours of mission endurance at depths down to 300 m. The modular AUV weighs 442 kg and measures 4.5-5.5 m in length, integrating a 10.9 kWh battery pack. Travelling at 3 knots nominally (up to a maximum of 6 knots), the A-18M can look for mines using the Umisas sonar as the T-18M towfish does, having been designed and built using much of the same technology as the T-18M. While the T-18M is towed behind the 125, and deployed and recovered using a winch on the USV, the A-18M is lowered by the 125 into the water by cable and disengages a clamp on its nose to free itself from the cable. For recovery, it detects the cable, approaches it and recaptures it with its nose clamp so that the USV can reel it in. The 125 is also equipped to launch and recover Exail’s SeaScan ROV. This is equipped with high-performance sonar and HD cameras to ensure identification and classification of the potential December/January 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The Inspector 125 USV can perform MCM surveys and then launch UUVs for closer mine inspections or full-on neutralisations (Courtesy of Exail)
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