At the Combined Naval Event from 19 to 21 May in Farnborough, HII showcased REMUS underwater vehicles and ROMULUS surface vessels. Its announcement described separate underwater and surface collaborations with Babcock.1 An uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) is a submarine-shaped robot that runs without a crew, used to hunt mines, inspect seabed cables, and scout ahead of manned ships. HII said it has delivered more than 750 REMUS UUVs to over 30 countries, and that a REMUS 600 was launched and recovered through the torpedo tube of the submarine USS Delaware. That manoeuvre lets a submerged boat send a robot ahead to scout or hunt mines without surfacing.
Babcock and HII are working on submarine torpedo-tube launch and recovery of underwater vehicles. Separately, ARMOR Force (Autonomous and Remote, Maritime Operational Response) incorporates HII's ROMULUS surface vessels into a proposed future Royal Navy fleet. HII has also enlarged its Portchester facility in Hampshire as a European hub for allied navies. These announcements describe industrial collaboration and a support facility; they do not establish a Royal Navy procurement contract.
L3Harris said on 27 May its sub-launched Iver4 900 underwater vehicle is in delivery to the US Navy under a Defense Innovation Unit contract, a marker of how fast torpedo-tube-launched robots are reaching the fleet.2 Both HII and L3Harris demonstrated the launch-and-recovery trick within the same window. For European navies the read is procurement urgency, since seabed cables and pipelines now sit inside the threat picture and the robots to defend them are arriving from American primes first.
