AUKUS Navies Trial Hugin Drone for Underwater Missions

The UK Royal Navy has partnered with its US and Australian counterparts to assess the Hugin Superior autonomous system’s effectiveness in underwater warfare.

Held in Norfolk, Virginia, the test is part of the trilateral AUKUS alliance’s effort to mature solutions to improve interoperability across the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions.

The event saw the Hugin employ sensors to collect data across underwater and seafloor environments.

Experts from the British team’s Diving and Threat Exploitation Group and Mine and Threat Exploitation Group deployed the drone from a commercial offshore support vessel called the “Island Pride,” which was provided by marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity.

Alongside the Hugin, the support boat carried additional prototype technologies for detecting, tracking, and eliminating threats at different depths.

Simulations using the collective underwater solutions were also conducted, in which the participants were tasked with monitoring and securing subsea infrastructure such as communication cables and gas pipelines, salvage materials lost in the field, and disarming and neutralizing mines and other explosive devices.

The Hugin Superior is developed by Kongsberg for mine countermeasures and geophysical, hydrographic, and environmental protection operations up to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) deep at sea.

The drone has a length of 7 meters (22 feet) and weighs about 2,200 kilograms (4,850 pounds).

It can be fitted with a high-area coverage synthetic aperture sonar, a multibeam echo sounder, digital color cameras, acoustic doppler and laser profilers, a methane sensor, and a magnetometer to gather different measurements according to mission profiles.

For navigation and communication, the Hugin is equipped with advanced processors, positioning, under-ice, and collision avoidance capabilities, as well as radio, over-the-horizon satellite link, and network-attached storage.

The autonomous vehicle is powered by pressure-tolerant batteries with up to eight hours of charge for a top speed of 5.2 knots (9.6 kilometers/5.9 miles per hour), range of 7 nautical miles (7.4 kilometers/4.6 miles), and endurance of eight hours.