"Exail, formerly iXblue, recently took part in the Digital
Horizon Unmanned & Artificial Intelligence Exercise in Bahrain,
organized by the US Navy. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet held the three-week
exercise in December to test new unmanned technologies, as part of its
plans to establish the world’s first Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)
fleet of one hundred drones in the Gulf by the end of the summer.
The current geopolitical situation means that manned assets are in
increasing demand elsewhere, leading the Navy to look to the latest
unmanned technologies to expand its capabilities. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper,
commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and
Combined Maritime Forces, set up Task Force 59 last year to speed new
tech integration across the 5th Fleet, and seek alternative,
cost-effective solutions for conducting Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA)
missions. Maritime Domain Awareness can be defined as the effective
understanding of military and non-military events in the maritime
environment that could impact the security, safety, economy, or
environment of a nation or a region.
✓ Exail’s DriX USV was among the fifteen USVs and Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (UAVs) selected to participate in the exercise, which staged a
Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) mission. The USVs and UAVs were tasked
with gathering data on the surface in order to detect and identify
potential threats. One of the main requirements was for the drones to
communicate with each other using a common OPS system. The
complementarity aspect of the different drones was also important, as
the 5th Fleet aims to leverage the different capacities of each drone to
cover a wide array of competencies in order to produce a Common
Operating Picture of what is occurring in a specific zone of water.
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✓ With its highly hydrodynamic monohull and drop keel, DriX showed high
reliability with excellent seakeeping and speed results, accomplishing
its mission of gathering data on the surface and proving its capacity to
successfully integrate third party radar and cameras. The ability of
DriX to integrate within a military communications network was
successfully proven, thanks to its wide range of communication means
(including Certus, 4G, Wifi and Silvus). The USV further meets
requirements in terms of communications redundancy, crucial for
minimizing risk during military operations, and is fitted with an
advanced collision avoidance system that ensures robust and safe
autonomous navigation at sea.
Guillaume Eudeline, Exail’s Naval Autonomy Market Director said:
“We’re very happy about the feedback from the TF59 on DriX’s
performance. We’d like to thank the US Navy 5th Fleet for their support
throughout the exercise and in particular Capt. Michael Brasseur and his
staff. For the first time DriX integrated a multiple-unmanned
collaborative military organization, alongside some of the industry’s
best. It was a real success and we are proud to have collaborated in
this group effort, which showed what unmanned technologies can bring to
MDA.”
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