Fincantieri and its subsidiaries Fincantieri NexTech and IDS (Systems Engineering) collaborate with the CSSN (Naval Support and Experimentation Center) of the Italian Navy during the REPMUS (Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping augmented by Maritime Unmanned Systems) 2023, an organized annual military exercise and hosted by the Portuguese Navy and NATO with the participation of foreign military forces, universities and hi-tech companies.
REPMUS, underway these days in Portugal, allows NATO and partner countries, the NATO Centers of Excellence and the NATO Maritime Research and Experimentation Centre, to test Fincantieri's cutting-edge solutions in the field in a realistic environment. of remote and unmanned systems, which include the Multi Mission MUS Toolkit, a platform based on the SAND (Surface Advanced Naval Drone) together with the innovative UMS (Unmanned Management System).
Pierroberto Folgiero, CEO of Fincantieri, said: “The underwater dimension is acquiring growing relevance due to the presence of critical infrastructures, resources and activities. In this context, Fincantieri is an accelerator and catalyst of marine technologies, capable of providing underwater and surface action capabilities and guaranteeing interoperability between the fleet and unmanned vessels".
The Multi Mission MUS Toolkit can be integrated onto new generation ships and units already in service, increasing the effectiveness and operability of specific military activities and reducing or even eliminating personnel exposure to risks. The UMS platform and autonomous driving activities, developed on the basis of the experience gained with the remote control aircraft systems of IDS (now part of Fincantieri NexTech), can be supervised by operators through appropriate remote control stations.
The SAND, launched in early 2019 as part of a joint project between IDS, Effebi and Meccano Engineering, is an unmanned, multi-role and reconfigurable surface vehicle, which can be used for a variety of missions, from search to rescue , from environmental monitoring to maritime safety. SAND was developed primarily to address recursive or hazardous operational scenarios where the deployment of personnel can be safely and effectively replaced by the use of autonomous, unmanned vessels.
Over the last year, the Launch and Recovery System (LARS) has been integrated onto the SAND, which is capable of deploying Graal Tech's autonomous underwater vehicles, thus implementing the capabilities of the mine counteraction, anti-submarine warfare and protection units. critical seabed infrastructure. Through the Fincantieri NexTech UMS, the SAND, acting as a communication gateway, allows you to manage a coordinated team of unmanned systems of different types (flying, surface and submarine) from virtual ships on land or from real ships such as the Italian FREMM .
The system also features a high level of data protocol standardization, including CATL for communication between different command and control systems which supports interoperability in line with the emerging NATO STANAG 4817.
