Sirius
French Navy's uncrewed MMCM minehunter, first deployed alongside UK's Ariadne aboard RFA Lyme Bay.
Sirius, the French Navy's mine-hunting drone, reached the Middle East aboard RFA Lyme Bay on 23 June 2026, but a 7 July tanker attack stalled Omani authorisation before she could clear any of roughly 80 Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Last refreshed: 3 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Has the French Navy's Sirius drone and Britain's Ariadne actually cleared any mines together yet?
Timeline for Sirius
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Autonomous Systems: Land & SeaBackground
Sirius is the French Navy's uncrewed mine-countermeasures surface vessel, developed under the Anglo-French Maritime Mine Countermeasures programme that has run since 2015 and built around Thales's SAMDIS sonar. She is entirely distinct from other entities named Sirius, including Sirius XM, various spacecraft and historical vessels.
Her British counterpart is the Royal Navy's RNMB Ariadne, developed under the same bilateral framework with Thales as the shared sensor supplier. The two systems are designed to operate together, giving either navy an export reference for the combined toolkit when a third country asks for autonomous mine-hunting capability.
Sirius and Ariadne were designed from the outset to a common interface standard so either navy's support ship, sonar operators and neutraliser drones can work with both hulls interchangeably, the arrangement that let the two vessels sail the Gulf mission from a single Lyme Bay deck.
Sirius still awaits a clearance order
Sirius was embarked aboard RFA Lyme Bay at Toulon in early June 2026 alongside the Royal Navy's Ariadne, the first time either navy had run two allied robot minehunters from one ship, and reached the Middle East on 23 June escorted by HMS Dragon and two German mine-countermeasures vessels.
Paris and London secured Omani clearance in early July to remove roughly 80 Iranian mines from the southern Hormuz channel, the operation Sirius had sailed from Toulon for. A 7 July tanker attack intervened first, so her own clearance run never started; she remains alongside Ariadne in the Lyme Bay package, integrated but unused.
Sirius awaits its live mine-clearance order
Has France's Sirius drone cleared any mines in the Strait of Hormuz yet?
How does the Anglo-French MMCM programme split work between the two navies?
What happened at Toulon with France's mine-hunting drone in June 2026?
What is France's Sirius mine-hunting drone?
Reference
Is the French Sirius drone the same as the satellite radio company?
