Saildrone said Monday it is partnering with France’s Thales Australia subsidiary to integrate towed sonar systems onto its largest unmanned surface vehicles (USVs).
Under a new strategic partnership between the companies, Saildrone Surveyor USVs will integrate Thales’s BlueSentry thin-line towed array for use in anti-submarine missions. Saildrone announced this deal at the start of the annual Navy League 2024 Sea Air Space conference.
The 65-foot, 15-ton Surveyor USV is designed to perform long-endurance deep ocean mapping and maritime domain awareness missions. Saildrone clarified that by adding the BlueSentry towed array it will allow the vehicle to perform autonomous underwater Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) missions for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) applications.
The company argued these capabilities will help naval clients free up other traditional low-density/high demand manned assets for other missions.
According to Thales’ BlueSentry website, it counts as an autonomous payload equipped for ASW and undersea surveillance missions. It includes the Thales Thin Line Array with onboard edge processing, secure sea-to-shore data transmission of acoustic intelligence.
The company underscored BlueSentry is unmanned naval platform agnostic, “with a Space Weight Power and Cooling (SWaP-C) budget that allows for installation on a wide range of vessels.”
Thales’ Thin Line Towed Array itself is a payload designed to support ASW and Maritime Domain Awareness with acoustic sensor technology used for active and passive applications, signal processing, recording and a reporting system.
Saildrone said the Surveyor was designed to conduct persistent, wide-area maritime domain awareness missions by using radar, cameras, acoustics, and machine learning to provide comprehensive situational awareness remotely.
“Combining the BlueSentry thin line towed array with our most capable USV provides a game-changing solution for wide-area ASW operations. Saildrone is committed to continuously delivering new advanced solutions to our defense customers, and it is wonderful to be able to add this new capability to the list of Saildrone services,” Richard Jenkins, Saildrone founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Troy Stephen, vice president underwater systems for Thales Australia and New Zealand, noted this agreement is in line with a history of the subsidiary exporting specialized sonar and acoustic products to the U.S.
“This opportunity with Saildrone now represents the ability to expand that support to include our latest innovations in the field of undersea surveillance through the BlueSentry thin line array system. The Saildrone Surveyor offers a unique capability within the field of USVs, and Thales looks forward to the opportunity of contributing to the impressive maritime domain awareness capability of the platform,” Stephen said in a statement.
In 2022, Saildrone initiated a separate strategic partnership with Austal USA for the latter to become the exclusive builder of Surveyors (Defense Daily, Aug 30, 2022).