During the Talisman Saber maneuvers The Royal Navy of Great Britain has confirmed the possibility of conducting reconnaissance operations in real time using the uninhabited underwater vehicle Excalibur, which the operators controlled at a distance of more than 16,000 km.
According to Navy Recognition, the Royal Navy personnel providing control of the robotic submarine were in Australia, and the Excalibur itself was carrying out a mission in British waters. This is the first successful demonstration of a remote-controlled underwater drone at intercontinental distances.
Ultra-large uninhabited underwater vehicle Excalibur, United Kingdom
UK MoD
XLUUV type underwater vehicle, United Kingdom
Turnchapel Wharf
Excalibur is an ultra–large uninhabited underwater vehicle of the XXLUV type, designed to operate autonomously for a long time and perform high-risk tasks without human intervention. The experimental drone was built by MSubs as part of the CETUS project. MSubs received a corresponding contract worth 15.4 million pounds in November 2022.
The device is 12 meters long, 2.2 meters in diameter, and weighs up to 25 tons with a full test payload. Allegedly, the MSubs product is now the largest and most complex unmanned underwater vehicle purchased by the European fleet.
Excalibur is built according to a modular scheme with an open architecture, which makes it possible to quickly reconfigure the payload depending on the tasks set. The device is equipped with a set of modern acoustic sensors, bathymetric mapping tools and secure communication channels.
The drone is capable of observing the seabed, monitoring underwater communications, conducting patrols and reconnaissance. Its silent electric propulsion system and low acoustic visibility make it an ideal platform for covert data collection.
The leading naval power in the world, including the US, China, Russia, the UK, Japan and Germany, are developing in the field of large underwater drones class XLUUV. However, only a few of them are implementing projects for combat modifications of such devices, limited to surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Even the well–known American device of this type, ORCA, is limited in combat capabilities - it is only capable of exposing mines.
India and China have announced the development of combat XLUUVs. In June 2023, at the MADEX exhibition in Busan, the South Korean company Hanwha Ocean presented a project for an ultra-large underwater drone with two torpedo tubes. In January 2024, the Naval Group entered into a framework agreement with the General Directorate of Armaments (DGA) of France for the design, production and testing of a UCUV-type unmanned combat underwater vehicle demonstrator.
