ECA Group releases its Underwater Mines Disposal White paper

Mines and remnant bombs dropped during World War II are among the majority of threats that can damage ships and crews. That's why being able to detect and neutralise these underwater threats is a major stake when navigating on potentially mined areas.

From conventional Mine-hunting to new neutralisation devices

With the development of unmanned systems, conventional ways of perform mine-hunting missions have changed.

Maritime mine clearance has traditionally been conducted since the 1970s by dedicated ships called minehunters. Now, the objective is to reduce human exposure to danger and keep crews off the minefield while destroying the largest possible number of threats in the shortest time possible.

Before, deploying an identification underwater vehicles was a lenghty process and whose neutralisation capabilities were limited. Now with Expendable mine disposal vehicles or 'minekillers 'it is possible to remedy those drawbacks.

They are remotely deployed in the minefield by specialist vessels (especially USVs) or from land. The USV deploys other robots that are remotely controlled from the support vessel or from land.

Unmanned Maritime Integrated System (UMIS) developed by the ECA Group

To improve the performance of current devices, ECA Group, developped a simple and efficient solution dedicated to coastal and port security which deploys different types of unmanned surface and underwater robots.

In order to identify and neutralise mines, UMIS uses a USV (INSPECTOR), first deploying an inspection vehicle (SEASCAN MK2) and then a combat minekiller (K-STER C) to neutralise the mine.

ECA Group, in the framework of the Belgian Navy evaluation of Unmanned Maritime Systems 2017 demonstrated in June its capability to deploy simultaneously its underwater drones (ROV & AUV) from an USV to perform parallel and collaborative Detection to Identification MCM operation.