European navies chase the white whale of torpedo-busting torpedoes

COLOGNE, Germany – The know-how guarantees to be a recreation changer: a torpedo-seeking torpedo fired by floor vessels for head-on intercepts, missile-defense model.

But after greater than a decade of analysis, lead nations Germany and the Netherlands are nonetheless years away from becoming their navies with a hard-kill torpedo countermeasure.

Germany’s navy has been toying with a product referred to as SeaSpider, developed by Atlas Elektronik, for a number of years. Work on the only real know-how possibility into account in Europe goes again even additional, with engineers finding out it for no less than 15 years, in accordance with the agency’s web site.

However whereas Atlas has tried to market the system as prepared for fight, no navy has but taken the bait, and the Dutch Ministry of Defence has repeatedly pushed again the beginning of a proper buying program primarily based on SeaSpider.

The German sea service did checks some years in the past, however determined towards adopting the system. And the Canadian navy, deemed a potential SeaSpider launch buyer because of the timing of its large-scale floor combatant program, made no point out of the potential in its preliminary lineup of applied sciences for the longer term fleet.

A spokesman for Atlas’ mum or dad firm, Thyssen Krupp Marine Programs, declined to debate SeaSpider, pointing to earlier requests by the German navy to maintain particulars below wraps. A spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Protection stated the know-how’s classification and contractual standing prohibit the disclosure of particulars.

Nonetheless, officers in Berlin imagine {that a} functionality to intercept torpedoes with torpedoes is a crucial force-protection know-how in precept, the spokeswoman advised Protection Information.

Torpedoes have traditionally been one of many most important threats to floor vessels, with the weapon concerned in additional than half of sinkings of U.S. Navy ships throughout World Battle II, in accordance with U.S. Coast Guard knowledge cited by Dutch researchers at TNO, a government-linked analysis group.

Protection towards torpedoes stays basically a dropping proposition, in accordance with specialists, leaving floor ships comparatively susceptible as soon as such a weapon is headed their approach. The primary defensive measures encompass maneuvering, or launching decoys to confuse incoming torpedoes. But the latter is ineffective towards so-called wake-homing variants, which align their journey path to hit ships in a straight line from behind, their sonar signature buried within the acoustic noise of a ship’s personal propulsion system.

The U.S. Navy experimented with an anti-torpedo interceptor put in on three of its plane carriers in 2017, earlier than uninstalling the system in 2018, saying that whereas the hard-kill measure confirmed “some functionality to defeat an incoming torpedo,” reliability was unsure and lethality of the system was untested.

SeaSpider can intercept all kinds of torpedoes, combining knowledge from sensors put in on the service ship and the interceptor torpedo to compute collision paths with the inbound weapon, the producer guarantees on its web site.

The package deal has been in play once more since final 12 months for additional improvement below the auspices of a European Union program, led by Germany and the Netherlands, labeled merely “Anti-torpedo Torpedo,” or ATT.

A one-sentence description for the undertaking on an EU web site describes a need for “bringing a developed anti-torpedo torpedo demonstrator to the production-ready design, with a certified effector and a confirmed purposeful chain,” an obvious reference to the Atlas product that solely the Dutch Ministry of Defence would affirm to Protection Information.

A spokesperson there stated the SeaSpider know-how remains to be too immature to warrant organising a proper program, although Dutch protection officers have deliberate to take such a step, which requires parliamentary notification, since 2022. If all of it involves move, maybe in 2025, finances analysts have slotted a torpedo-killing torpedo functionality right into a class of applications consuming anyplace between €250 million and €1 billion, in accordance with the Dutch MOD.

That’s along with a associated effort, led by TNO and estimated at €50 million to €100 million, to sharpen the know-how for torpedo detection that may go into an eventual anti-torpedo torpedo suite, a spokesperson advised Protection Information.

Notably, the German MOD declined to reveal even the business crew of Atlas and TNO as lead corporations of the European Union program, arrange below the bloc’s defense-cooperation push often known as PESCO. A spokeswoman in Berlin stated no contracts had been signed within the matter.

Additionally unanswered have been questions in regards to the shortcomings that the German navy sees in SeaSpider. Protection Information has discovered that the depth of the envisioned intercept sequence is at situation, with the Atlas system at present restricted to hits across the water floor.

Ultimately, the timing of a European anti-torpedo torpedo program might line up with Dutch Navy plans for brand new anti-submarine warfare frigates, the primary of which is predicted to grow to be operational in 2029. That’s as a result of German officers count on the PESCO program to yield a production-ready system that passes all regulatory necessities by the top of the last decade, with a prototype in-built 2028.

Within the meantime, different European nations even have taken an curiosity, together with Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Italy and Spain, in accordance with situation specialists.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this report.