UMS Skeldar, a joint venture company between Saab and UMS Aero, is to bring its V-200 rotary uncrewed aerial system (UAS) to the Indo-Pacific region for the first-time next year.
The company wants to conduct a full range of demonstrations of the V-200 to highlight its capabilities and is in the process of talking to naval forces and countries that would be interested in hosting the platform and conducting trials with it.
Richard Hjelmberg, vice president for business development told ADM that the company had yet to bring “the complete system” to the region and it would be happy to demonstrate in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere.
Australia’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) surface fleet review will not be published until early 2024 but the potential for the procurement of a new ‘Tier 2’ warship for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) means that there is a new opportunity for a future maritime UAS project.
This is because the Arafura-class offshore patrol vessel (OPV) project could be cut to make way for a new warship and the existing Sea 129 Phase 5 Block 1 project that had been sole-sourced to Schiebel for its S-100 Camcopter was stopped in June. Camcopter was due to serve on the new OPVs and therefore the company did not receive the contract to deliver 20-40 of its UAS.
In the near future it is likely there will be a gap in capability where contenders will likely compete in a new project to provide UAS for any new type of ship the RAN chooses.
“The RAN is waiting to understand where developments are heading depending on the ship they want,” Hjelmberg said.
UMS Skeldar is developing the capability of the V-200 to go beyond just wide area surveillance and to include anti-submarine warfare (ASW), electronic warfare (EW) and mine countermeasures (MCM) capabilities. With this capability Hjelmberg said that the company would be able to provide a UAS solution for Australia’s Sea 1905 MCM project, the Sea 5012 undersea awareness project as well as a future Sea 129 maritime UAS ISR replacement programme.
Hjelmberg explained that the company was working with Canadian company Ultra Marine under the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program to develop a sonobuoy deployment from small UAS and give a medium tactical UAS the capability to contribute to ASW operations. The V-200 is capable of dropping six G-size sonobuoys to conduct bathymetric scanning and passive sonar detection with potential for future active detection.
For an EW capability, Hjelmberg said that UMS Skeldar was collaborating with two partners to introduce a SIGINT and COMINT capability into the V-200. “This includes passive radar emissions scanning and a jamming capability and spoofing,” he explained, “the latter includes the ability to create false targets and fake profiles.”
Meanwhile UMS Skeldar is part of the Dutch-Belgian rMCM programme run by Exail and is providing the V-200 as part of the MCM toolbox for the 12 MCM ships being delivered to the navies of both countries. Hjelmberg said that the V-200 is fitted with a LiDAR sensor and can act as an airborne radio relay to allow the ships to deploy assets from further away to a minefield by providing longer-range communications.