REPMUS26
Annual NATO-backed uncrewed-systems exercise run by the Portuguese Navy at Tróia, Portugal.
REPMUS26 ran off Tróia, Portugal, from 31 August to 25 September 2026. Arquimea's Q-Slam 40 left a Spanish Navy robot boat in its first naval-drone launch, and Rheinmetall tied several makers' sensors and robots into one German Navy command POST.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
What did NATO's biggest drone exercise prove for armed uncrewed boats?
Timeline for REPMUS26
Arquimea fires a Q-Slam 40 from a USV
Autonomous Systems: Land & SeaBackground
REPMUS26 was the 2026 edition of REPMUS (Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems), an annual maritime robotics exercise. The Portuguese Navy organises it with the University of Porto's engineering faculty, NATO's Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation and NATO's Maritime Unmanned Systems Initiative, and hosts it at Tróia, Portugal. The 2026 edition ran from 31 August to 25 September.
Navies and manufacturers use the exercise to test uncrewed systems together. At REPMUS26, a Spanish Navy uncrewed boat served as the launch platform for Arquimea's Q-Slam 40 loitering munition, sending live video reaching Spanish Navy command systems; Infodefensa called it Arquimea's first launch from a naval drone. Neither source dates the launch within the exercise window. Rheinmetall demonstrated a containerised German Navy command POST that put sensors and robots from several makers on a single screen.
Stark Defence's Vanta-12 uncrewed boat also took part, and the Cascade munition was test-fired digitally from a Vanta.
