Saab’s Sea Wasp ROV Undergoes Testing; Navy to Deploy Blackwing UAS
Saab's new Sea Wasp ROV.
Saab has introduced Sea Wasp, a remotely operated vehicle equipped with a robotic arm that can relocate, identify and neutralize underwater explosives.
At a press conference at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition, Saab’s Bert Johansson, sales director for underwater systems, said the Swedish company built Sea Wasp to meet a broad agency announcement from the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.
Saab was “a bit surprised” to win the contract, he said, but in 14 months delivered three Sea Wasp vehicles, which are hybrids of pre-existing technologies based on Saab’s Seaeye line of commercial ROVs.
“We can reorganize this technology platform to meet some very specific requirements in a short time,” Johansson said.
However, the Seaeye platform had to lose quite a bit of weight, going from around 200 kilograms to only 90 for the Sea Wasp, which needed to be carried by a two-man team.
“That turned out to be the single most difficult thing in the whole effort,” Johnasson said.
Losing the weight gave the vehicle a very high power-to-weight ratio, allowing it to hold steady in currents of up to 2.5 knots.
The Sea Wasps have been delivered to the U.S. Navy EOD Group 2, the FBI’s Counter-IED Unit and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Counter-Terrorist Operations Maritime Response Unit, which will be evaluating and testing them over the next 10–12 months.
On the larger end of the scale, Huntington Ingalls Industries showcased Proteus, a much larger unmanned underwater vehicle developed in partnership with Battelle and Bluefin Industries.
Proteus can autonomously deliver large payloads over hundreds of miles, including cargo or even up to six human divers. The vehicle on display isn’t a model — it’s the actual Proteus, the only one in existence so far.
Steve Somlyody, a senior research scientist for maritime systems at Battelle, said the U.S. Navy has used Proteus for both cargo and diver missions since 2012. The vehicle also recently underwent a 30-day endurance test, where it was continuously powered in a test tank.
On the air side, AeroVironment announced that the U.S. Navy plans to deploy Blackwing, a small, tube-launched UAS that can be launched underwater from submarines or unmanned underwater vehicles.
It’s a variant of the company’s Switchblade flying munition, although Blackwing would only be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as it carries a day/night camera but no weapons.
Blackwing was developed as part of a 2013 Navy and U.S. Special Operations Command-sponsored Joint Capability Technology Demonstration called Advanced Weapons Enhanced by Submarine UAS against Mobile targets, or AWESUM.
