LORIENT, France — Naval Group subsidiary Sirehna has launched an unmanned surface ship that learned lessons from Ukraine’s use of robotic boats against Russian targets in the Black Sea, according to company officials.
The vessel, which measures just under 10 meters in length, is called the Seaquest S and has an endurance of 24 hours. Sirehna plans to offer the ship optimized for surveillance, electronic warfare, strike and anti-submarine missions, executives said here during a press tour ahead of the Euronaval naval confab in Paris next month.
Speaking about some of the lessons learned by Naval Group from the widespread use of naval drones in Ukraine, Pierre-Antoine Fliche, head of the drones and autonomous systems product lines, emphasized the speed at which these types of systems need to be upgraded.
“One of the things we learned is the development cycle in Ukraine, where they go from one version to another every six months, and that’s not only because they’re super fast, but also because the adversary is defending itself,” Fliche said . Defense news. “That’s one of the reasons why we purposely built the SeaQuest as a very modular platform and want to develop machine tactics with end users, because we know they will develop on a six- to nine-month cycle.”
USV technologies have become increasingly sophisticated, and Ukrainian armed forces have used a wide variety of systems, most recently armed with multiple missile systems, to attack a greater number of small surface, air and coastal targets.
In May, the head of Ukraine’s intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, said the country has relied more heavily on them recently due to their consistent effectiveness.
“This equipment works – that’s the main thing, it produces results… a third of the destroyed combat potential of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is the most decent indicator,” Budanov said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
According to Naval Group, SeaQuest is currently the only small USV designed to board frigates and warships.
Although the Navy drone, which is undergoing sea trials in France, does not yet have swarm capabilities, Fliche said they could be added later.
Ukrainian officials have predicted that these types of robotic maritime platforms If they undergo improvements, they are poised to dominate conventional combat vessels in the future, at least in closed or semi-closed water bodies.
