The Royal Netherlands Navy (RNLN) began testing its first surface drone on 17 July 2024, the Unmanned Surface Vessel 90 (USV90), intended to act as a mother ship for other autonomous systems during de-mining operations.
Sea mines remain one of the cheapest and most dangerous threats to Naval forces, and navies have been mitigating their impacts with investments in autonomous mine-countermeasures (MCM) capabilities for two decades.
The RNLN effort will be extensively tested in practice into the coming year, initially with a crew aboard, but with intentions to operate the USV90 uncrewed via remote control.
The USV90 is 9m long and will host a variety of other drones that are being delivered through the Mine Control Capacity Replacement (rMCM) project, with knowledge from the USV90’s progress being back linked to help in the development and testing.
The Belgian and Dutch navies have been replacing their aging fleet of Tripartite-class vessels since 2023, with the Belgium Naval & Robotics consortium, formed by by Naval Group and ECA Group, supplying 12 vessels. ECA is supplying Inspector 125 unmanned surface vehicles, which can host the A18-M autonomous underwater vehicles, and SEASCAN and K-STER C remotely operated vehicles.
During the Critical Design Review of the rMCM programme in 2022, an final critical design was accepted by Belgium and Netherlands, including producing one new city-class ship every six months with a capability of sailing 35,000 nautical miles without refuelling, 200 days sustainment without resupplies for 30 days, integrated management systems, a crane capable of carrying 20-foot containers, two Launch and Recovery Systems (LARS) for USCs and another two small LARS for RHIBS.
