EDA issues unmanned maritime system contract

FFI has been issued a contract by the European Defence Agency (EDA) on behalf of Norway, Italy and Germany for the Conformal Array Performance Estimation (CAPEM) collaborative R&T project. EDA made the announcement in a 24 November statement.

As part of the EDA Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) R&T programme, the CAPEM project will aim to improve sonar performance by reducing the effects of self-induced noise and providing tools for developing conformal hydrophone arrays. The work will involve both simulation and experimental measurements with an unmanned underwater vehicle.

The EDA UMS is a Category A programme. It represents the first major and concrete success of an ambitious technology programme directly connected to Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM), one of the twelve EDA’s Capability Development Plan priority actions decided by the Agency’s participating Member States in July 2008.

The programme aims to improve naval capacities by improving the capabilities of Unmanned Maritime Systems through a system-of-systems approach while taking into account the notions of interoperability, modularity, inter-changeability of modules and standardisation. The programme focuses mainly on MCM (influence minesweeping; drifting mines detection; and buried mines detection and neutralisation) but also address other naval applications including harbour protection and antisubmarine warfare. In addition, the programme includes projects with transversal impact, studying issues such as underwater communications; improved autonomy; network enabled coordination; interfaces and standards; and even safety and regulations for unmanned maritime vehicles.

FFI will team with CNR-INSEAN (Italy), ATLAS ELEKTRONIK (Germany), FUGRO GEOTEAM (Norway), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) and WTD-71 (Germany) to perform the work.

CAPEM has a duration of 48 months and a value of 4.75 million Euro.