Royal Navy commissions new autonomous vessel Madfox into the fleet
Madfox, a new autonomous vessel in the Royal Navy's fleet, has been formally commissioned. NavyX, the Royal Navy's experimentation division, is in charge of the USV.
Madfox is derived from technology firm L3Harris’ Mast-13 vessel, which for the past 18 months has been operated by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) on a series of trials with the Royal Navy.
“With Madfox now directly in the hands of NavyX, the team will be able to explore a multitude of issues such as safety, regulatory compliance, new missions, new payloads and the role that a USV can play in complex operations and within the future fleet," commented Commander Antony Crabb, NavyX team leader.
The MAST-13 is a 13-meter (41-foot) long high-speed unmanned testbed vessel designed and developed by L3Harris for Dstl. It is intended for the Royal Navy to explore new methods of retaining a technological advantage over possible adversaries. The ASView control system was used to integrate it into HMS Albion, allowing the unmanned vessel to be remotely operated from a station on board the warship.
MAST-13 was able to maneuver safely at a distance from its operator thanks to the good integration and complete situational awareness provided by the on-board sensor kit.
The MAST-13 is a 13-meter (41-foot) long high-speed unmanned testbed vessel designed and developed by L3Harris for Dstl. It is intended for the Royal Navy to explore new methods of retaining a technological advantage over possible adversaries. The ASView control system was used to integrate it into HMS Albion, allowing the unmanned vessel to be remotely operated from a station on board the warship.
MAST-13 was able to maneuver safely at a distance from its operator thanks to the good integration and complete situational awareness provided by the on-board sensor kit.
MAST-13 was remotely piloted into HMS Albion's dock at the start of the trial, showing how simple it is to operate an ASV alongside a warship.
After that, the team completed 22 manned cycles of entering and retracting before transitioning to the remote station to repeat the procedure without an onboard crew.
MAST-13 also performed several other tasks in unmanned mode while sending feeds back to the remote base, using the Maritime Autonomous Platform Exploitation (MAPLE) integrated command and control system.
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