German Navy tests BlueWhale autonomous underwater vehicle

The German Navy has concluded a two-week trial of the new BlueWhale extra large uncrewed underwater vehicle (XLUUV) from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

The test formed part of the Navy's Operational Experimentation (OPEX) and was run in the Baltic Sea. This is an area where Germany has deployed significant resources towards naval security in the last six months, including opening a NATO naval command centre in the region.

In fact, NATO's Centre of Excellence for Operations allowed the experimental connection of the BlueWhale into the navy’s overall situational picture of the undersea environment in the Baltic Sea.

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The BlueWhale XLUUV was launched at the UDT event in 2023 and the trial by the German Navy was run according to the specifications of both the navy and the Bundeswehr Technical Centre for Ships and Naval Weapons (WTD 71).

It is hoped that the OPEX initiative will pave the way towards the navy’s Marine 2035 and Beyond plan. To do so, it will be geared to actively address both current and future security-relevant threat situations.

To address those potential threat situations, it will particularly focus on testing new approaches and technologies under conditions that are as realistic as possible.

The BlueWhale vehicle is 10.9m long, with a diameter of 1.12m and a weight of 5.5t. It can perform covert intelligence gathering above the sea surface, detect submarines and underwater targets and gather acoustic intelligence. It can also search for and detect naval mines on the seabed.

More and more extra large autonomous underwater vehicles are coming to market. November 2024 also saw BAE Systems’ UXLAUV, Herne, undergo its in-water trials.

President and CEO of IAI Boaz Levy explained that the combination of the modularity of function in such systems, potential cost savings, and the benefits of removing human operators from harmful situations will push development.

“We are facing a new era in which submarines will change the situational picture and operational capabilities like the changes brought about by unmanned aircraft in the past," Levy said.

"An autonomous submarine can perform a significant portion of the tasks of a manned submarine, without the need for operators on board, for up to several weeks."