SAES will promote in Abu Dhabi their Exercise Naval Mines and Range stations.
SAES will participate, in collaboration with Navantia, at the NAVDEX International defence exhibition and conference (stand B-057), which will be held from 19 to 23 February at Abu Dhabi. Following lines describes the challenge on Naval Warfare and the solutions that SAES has developed to face them.
The challenge.
Nobody can accurately say how many naval mines the countries in the Middle East and North African region possess since it is one of the most secret pieces of information about countries all over the world. The unquestionable fact is that naval mines are a strategic weapon par excellence: naval mines can deny naval space and have the power to produce greater lethal damage at reduced cost.
The more modern naval mines, capable of being activated by magnetic, electrical or acoustic influences, make this threat bigger. As a result, there has been a significant increase in investments related to the protection and control of strategic areas, straits and other force-used maritime zones.
Protection against mines.
For the effective protection of maritime areas, military personnel should be familiar with naval mines and understand concepts like multi-influence ship signatures and how the ships are “seen” by the mine or how the naval mines can be programmed.
There are two effective ways to provide that knowledge. First, understanding the complete signature of the ships, which includes the electric, magnetic, pressure, seismic and acoustic radiation. Secondly, but equally as important is training. In this sense, naval mine training is a good investment so that the crew knows how smart naval mines work and how to prevent damage from them.
Solutions.
SAES, have developed two industry-leading solutions: MIRS and MINEA.
MIRS is a portable system to obtain the complete signature of a ship. The system provides real influence measures (magnetic, electric, pressure, acoustic and seismic) in a real and controlled scenario, to successfully counteract threats.
Compared to fixed stations, it provides a decisive advantage, to obtain all the signatures of the target ship in any geographical location.
MIRS can be used in different operational scenarios and applications:
- As a multi-influence range station, either portable or fixed.
- Providing maritime area protection
- As a discrete device to gather Signature Intelligence Information (SIGINT).
- As a R&D tool to develop and validate studies for signature reduction, for instance.
- As a tool to verify real-time ship signature levels (Acoustic, Magnetic and Electrical) when vessels are leaving the base.
- The other product that SAES want to promote are their exercise naval mines. MINEA is a set of Multi-influence Naval Mines, which use a variety of sensors to detect different physical influences.
The family of MINEA products comprises three types of naval mines: cylindrical bottom mines, conical shaped shallow-water mines and moored mines.
MINEA is a smart mine since it embodies several types of sensors: triaxial magnetic sensor, triaxial electric sensor, UEP and ELFE, acoustic sensor, pressure sensor and triaxial seismic.
One of the main advantages of MINEA is that its shape, dimensions and operation are similar to combat mines, recording all the signatures and events for debriefing and analysis.
As a conclusion, nowadays, Naval Mine Warfare is based on Signature Intelligence. It is necessary to be trained in this field as a way to assure that you have enhanced your ships’ safety, as well as maritime areas, as much as possible.