Army recognition: ECA Group unveils the A18-M mid-size AUV for mine warfare
ECA Group unveiled their latest autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV): The A18-M dedicated to mine counter measures.
Published on Navy recognition, March 2018.
The A18-M’s compactness and unequaled high-quality imagery makes it the best underwater military drone dedicated to mine warfare on the market.
A18-M: compact, modular, connected and enduring
A18-M is an autonomous underwater vehicle for large area mine and classification in all water depths up to 300m.
“Some of main advantages of this AUV are its large endurance and payload capacity which make it able to host high performance sonar payloads, such as synthetic aperture sonar providing unprecedented detection and classification performance.” says Léonie Delacou, AUVs product manager at ECA Group.
Due to its high stability, the AUV is much less affected by waves than a surface ship or a towed system, thus a very high image quality is obtained. The AUV can also adapt its operating depth to the environmental conditions, avoiding blind zones due to sound speed stratification.
Advanced on-board processing allows to process the image data to extract a list of contacts to be reviewed by expert sonar operators who may task other assets for identification and possibly disposal.
Learn more: ECA Group unveils its new generation mid-size AUV A18-M for underwater mine warfare