Mine Countermeasure Systems News

Norway's Kongsberg Maritime has secured a contract award with Polish shipbuilder Remontowa Shipbuilding SA (RSB) to supply three shipsets of Kongsberg Hugin Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) systems and related HiPAP positioning and communication systems for three newbuild warships for the Polish Navy.The total contract value exceeds €10 million, with the Kongsberg equipment planned for the next three ships in the Kormoran II Mine-Countermeasures (MCM) vessel program (#4, #5, and #6).These three ships will be delivered between 2026 and 2027.

The U.S. Navy needs more ships. And that means the Navy has to build more ships than it is decommissioning.The sea service has a stated a goal of 355 ships, and as many as 500 and more when unmanned platforms are counted. There are 298 ships in the fleet today. For surface ships, this number includes a high-low mix of highly capable large surface combatants, and smaller ships such as littoral combat ships LCS).The Navy’s smallest combatants are the 330-ton, 197-foot coastal patrol boats (PCs). Up until recently, ten of them have been serving in the Middle East with the U.S.

The Remote Minehunting System (RMS) successfully completed the test phase of a formal Operational Assessment designed to validate the system's mine hunting capabilities and operational availability on Aug. 21 at Lockheed Martin’s Riveria Beach, Fla., Test Facility. The RMS is one of several next-generation Naval mine countermeasure systems being developed by the Navy. The two Engineering Development Model (EDM) RMS systems will be formally accepted by the Navy in the very near future. The objective of the Operational Assessment was to demonstrate the last two items remaining in RMS development; system availability and crew training.