Thales Australia and Ocius Technologies have formed a partnership to accelerate the development and deployment of a scalable Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) capability for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and surveillance operations.
The Blue Sentry autonomous system, which consists of a team of Ocius Bluebottle USVs integrated with Thales Australia’s new thin line Fibre Optic Towed Array capability, is deployed from shore to autonomously patrol large areas of Australia’s coastline, performing underwater ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) missions for long periods of time at sea and in extreme weather conditions.
Chris Jenkins, Chief Executive, Thales Australia and New Zealand, said missions that would previously have necessitated the deployment of human assets for several days will be able to be carried out remotely using the Blue Sentry team of Autonomous Vessels at a significantly reduced cost of coverage.
“The detection and classification of modern undersea threats at tactically useful ranges requires a highly optimised balance between the sensor and the platform to ensure success in the most challenging of acoustic environments,” he continued.
“The specialist teams within Ocius and Thales Australia have worked to bring their respective capabilities together into the Australian designed and manufactured Blue Sentry product and we look forward to taking it into the future.”
Robert Dane, Founder and Chief Executive of Ocius Technology added, “If you can imagine a map of Australia with Blue Sentry Bluebottles scattered about the Exclusive Economic Zone where illegal vessels know if they enter our waters, they will get stung. This is not only Australian Sovereign capability it is the best. This is the quietest and most capable persistent USV platform combined with the best array.”
