Six months after the kick-off meeting of the SWArm and Teaming operation of manned & unmanned underwater vehicle SHOAL (SWAT-SHOAL) project, funded by the European Commission under the European Defence Fund (EDF2022) and coordinated by Navantia, the first General Assembly meeting brought the members of the consortium together at the Navantia Training Centre (NTC), in Cadiz, Spain.
Hosted by Navantia, the first SWAT-SHOAL General Assembly meeting gathered the 20 partners of the project: Navantia (Spain, project coordinator); Naval Group Belgium, SEA Europe (Belgium); Cafa Tech (Estonia), Naval Group (France); Atlas Elektronik, Develogic, Fraunhofer, WTD71 (Germany); Prisma Electronics, SOTIRIA (Greece); Fincantieri NexTech (Italy); Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (Norway); Akademia Marynarki Wojennej, PIAP (Poland); Adyta (Portugal); GMV, Sener, SAES (Spain); and Saab Kockums (Sweden).
General Assemblies, especially the first one, are key milestone for the project. It allows the partners to meet each other every six months, update the consortium on the current progress, align the different workpackages, address difficulties, and agree on actions to undertake for the following months. In addition to the workshops, Navantia organized a visit to the NTC and its simulator classrooms (including the Navantis Avatar Immersion Room). At the NTC, Navantia provides training programs for ship crews, training and coaching for Navantia personnel, and hosts various events and exhibitions.
“I am proud to say that our collaboration is solid and allows us to work efficiently as a European team. This first General Assembly showed our strong motivation and dedication to achieving the expectations set by the European Commission, and the Ministries of Defence, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the results of our research.” – said Victor Moreno Ortiz, SWAT-SHOAL Project Coordinator.
SWAT-SHOAL is a 36-month research project, which aims to develop a concept of a systems-of- systems based on swarming technologies to integrate manned and unmanned naval assets, collaborating effectively as a team to achieve greater performance and efficiency in a broad spectrum of underwater missions against moving subsurface threats. The system will enable different vehicle types, working in a team as a single unit, can face more complex scenarios, or that they are organized as a squad assigning a defined task to each platform.
