A UAV is deployed during CMRE's DRAVEX24 drifting mine detection sea trial. CMRE's Counter Drifting Mines initiative is designed to combine sensor types to provide capability for dealing with drifting mines at sea. (NATO)
NATO's Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) has developed – and demonstrated in sea trials – the integration of two different sensor technologies, providing at-sea detection, identification, and tracking of drifting mines.
The sensor package is designed for carriage onboard unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with sensing input and data output optimised through artificial intelligence (AI), Metin Pekkaptan – a CMRE robotics scientist and project lead for its Counter Drifting Mines initiative – told Janes on 10 February.
CMRE is the NATO Science and Technology Organization's (STO's) in-house maritime technology research laboratory, based in La Spezia, Italy. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, drifting mines have become a significant threat, which NATO – and CMRE – is trying to address. CMRE's new initiative, a common-funded NATO project supported by various NATO bodies, commenced in early 2024.
Under the initiative, the Drifting Mines UAV Experiments 2024 (DRAVEX24) trial was conducted off La Spezia in mid-December 2024. Seven days of activities included five days of at-sea testing.
The project aims to establish what physical sensing properties the task needs and craft a way of measuring the effects of different sensors, Pekkaptan said.
Two use cases are being considered: first, a shore-based, long-range UAV that checks on previously reported or new mines and sends information to a shore-based ground control station (GCS). The GCS includes a mission analysis computer. The UAV can be deployed in a standard-size shipping container.
Second, launching a UAV from a ship to conduct force protection surveillance around it.
Combining sensors
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