VILNIUS, Lithuania — U.S.-based Saildrone will deploy four large unmanned surface vessels in Danish waters next month to conduct maritime surveillance missions and help protect critical undersea infrastructure.
The deployment, which represents Saildrone’s first European mission, will be done in close cooperation with the Royal Danish Navy Command and the Danish Ministry of Defense Acquisition and Logistics Organization.
Four 10-meter Voyager USVs equipped with a suite of intelligence-gathering sensors and AI data fusion will be sent to Denmark to support the Danish military gain better maritime awareness.
The North and Baltic seas are some of the busiest shipping routes in the world. An estimated 2,000 ships are generally at sea at any given time in the Baltic Sea, according to the Helsinki Commission.
Denmark currently lacks sufficient assets to provide consistent and comprehensive monitoring of the waterway.
“The threats we face at sea are different and far more serious than just a few years ago,” the Danish Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen said at a recent press conference.
The Danish government approved last month a series of naval expansion plans, including the development of a program dedicated to assessing autonomous platforms such as naval drones and remote-controlled vehicles to conduct underwater surveillance.
Saildrone, which announced the establishment of a subsidiary in Copenhagen only a few weeks ago, has plans to expand its presence in the region, the company’s President John Mustin told Defense News.
“Our goal is to have that act as a sort of centre of excellence for our platforms, if for example some would need repair or maintenance work, they could do it right there,” the executive said in a May 8 interview.
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.
