Euronaval 2024: DGA contracts for new AUV, synthetic aperture sonar payload

The arrays and processing unit of Thales' SAMDIS 600 displayed at Euronaval 2024. (NAVYPIX/Richard Scott)

France's Direction Générale de L'armement (DGA) has co-contracted Exail and Thales to supply a new autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) sensor package as part of the French Navy's Système de lutte anti-mines marines futur (SLAM-F) offboard mine countermeasures (MCM) system.

Signed on 6 November at the Euronaval 2024 exhibition, held in Paris from 4 to 7 November, the co-contracting arrangement will see Thales integrate its SAMDIS 600 (Synthetic Aperture and Mine Detection Imagery Sonar) high-resolution SAS into the Exail A-18M medium AUV. The contract with the DGA covers the supply of an initial eight systems, with deliveries planned from early 2028, plus an option for eight more.

Intended to provide a covert mine-hunting capability in non-permissive environments, the combination of the A-18M AUV and SAMDIS 600 SAS has been selected to succeed the underwater capability previously delivered under the demonstration phase of the French/UK Maritime Mine Countermeasures (MMCM) programme. This integrated an earlier version of the SAMDIS SAS with the ECA (now Exail) A-27M AUV.

While SAMDIS demonstrated excellent performance during MMCM test and evaluation events, the A-27M vehicle was judged too large for operational use as part of SLAM-F. As a result, Thales has been working for several years to develop a more compact and energy-efficient version of SAMDIS suitable for integration into smaller-size AUVs.

According to Thales, the new-generation SAMDIS 600 SAS has recently been qualified by the DGA. The latest variant is half the size of its progenitor, with power consumption reduced three-fold through the adoption of new GPU-based SAS processing.