France and the U.K. are moving to stand-off mine countermeasures, a choice also made by the Netherlands and Belgium, while others including Italy and Germany are sticking with crewed minehunter vessels augmented by remote vehicles and drones, said Chris Cunnell. the Thales product line manager for autonomous mine countermeasures.

“Navies are going one of two routes,” Cunnell told Defense News at the Euronaval industry show outside Paris last week. “They’re either going to complete standoff – U.K., France, Belgium, Netherlands, the U.S. are all going a very similar route: They want to have crew outside of the minefield. Other navies have a philosophy that they continue to want to have a crewed mine-hunting capability, so that’s a vessel that will go into the minefield.”

The fully remote option has only now become really possible, according to Cunnell. Thales spent nearly 10 years developing the system it is delivering to France and the U.K., and started sea trials towards the end of 2020.

“If you look at what the Italian Navy are doing, if you look at Germany, very different philosophies,” Cunnell said. “From a Thales perspective, we respect the fact that navies have different approaches, we can provide a toolbox and a system for both. It’s up to them.”

The systems for France and the U.K. include a portable operations center, unmanned surface vehicles using detection methods including towed sonar, and a remotely-operated vehicle to neutralize mines. Autonomous functionality in the system includes deployment and operation of payloads, as well as navigation by the unmanned surface vehicles, according to Cunnell.

The towed sonar provided by Thales uses multi-aspect synthetic aperture that is “very operationally efficient” at reducing false positives, which combined with system maturity and the open architecture makes the Thales system “the best out there,” according to Cunnell.

Thales sees “a lot of export opportunities” for the system, CEO Patrice Caine said in an interview at Euronaval “There are a lot of countries looking at it and saying, `We also want to keep our sailors safe,’ so to say.”

He told Defense News the company is in talks with potential customers, declining to provide further details.

As part of the program, France is buying eight autonomous underwater drones from French firm Exail equipped with high-resolution sonar from Thales, with an option to acquire eight more, the Armed Forces said in a statement late Thursday. The first drones are expected to be delivered in the first half of 2028, with eight drones delivered to the Navy by mid-2030.

The drones will have a length of 5 meters and a diameter of around 47 centimeters, weigh 500 kilograms, have 10 hours of mission autonomy and an ability to dive to 300 meters.

The autonomous minehunting system is designed to replace all of France’s current mine warfare resources, including minehunters, sonar-towing vessels and diving vessels, the ministry said.

Mine detection is also evolving, and Thales has been experimenting with light detection and ranging, “lidar” for short, for mine hunting, analogous to how radar uses electromagnetic waves and sonar uses sound propagation.

The testing is linked to the Royal Navy’s Peregrine program, which has Thales working with helicopter-drone maker Schiebel to supply the U.K. with a naval surveillance UAV. The companies are looking at new payloads and capabilities to integrate, including lidar, James Dickie, product line architect for mine warfare systems at Thales in the U.K., told Defense News.

The biggest challenge for lidar lies in applying sufficient energy so there’s enough light in the water column, and Thales for that reason is looking at applications for mine detection in relatively shallow waters of up to about 20 meters.

Lidar will probably not replace sonar, and Thales for now sees the technology as complementary. One advantage is that light can be used for detection in the turbulent upper layers of the ocean, the “bubble layer,” where sonar is less dependable as it doesn’t work in air, according to Dickie.

Sonar “finds it’s really hard to travel through bubbles,” Dickie said. Thales is focused on using lidar for the layer of 3 to 5 meters “where we do have the challenge with acoustic technology.”

One of the reasons why Thales has looked at lidar is the surface mine threat in the Black Sea, where mines have broken free from their tether and are floating around. Black Sea countries are going to need a solution for drifting mines, according to Dickie.

“They’re really difficult to manage,” Dickie said. “The solution today is a person with binoculars looking for them. That’s not very reliable.”

The company is looking at a range of sensors for mine detection, including electro-optical, thermal, long-wave infrared and millimeter radar, for use from airborne platforms such as drones, but also from unmanned surface vehicles. Dickie said he expects lidar to have underwater applications, complementary to other detection methods.

“We’re not saying one is better than the other, it’s more about how we can use them for the given context,” Dickie said. “If it’s a poor-visibility day, camera is not going to work, but you’re going to get some utility from lidar and you’ll get some utility from radar. So it’s about finding the right sensor for the job.”

Mines are starting to be designed with geometries and materials to make acoustic sensing less effective, and lidar may have a role to play there, as well as technologies such as quantum magnetometers, according to Dickie.

MBDA is working on what it says are two complementary missiles as part of FC/ASW: a stealthy subsonic missile and another that travels at high supersonic speeds while remaining maneuverable. Italy will join the French-British project in 2025 for the development and manufacturing phases, the missile maker said in a briefing at the Euronaval conference on Wednesday.

The return of high-intensity conflict in Europe shows sovereign deep-strike capability is critical for the continent, while improved air defenses require a range of disruptive technologies to defeat them, according to MBDA – which also makes air-defense systems used by France, Italy, the U.K. and others.

“Given the strategic importance of deep strike, the FC/ASW project has been set a very aggressive schedule by launch partners France and the U.K.,” MBDA said in a statement on Wednesday.

MBDA has put more than 750 people across France and the U.K. on FC/ASW, making it the company’s biggest program ever, even before Italy’s contribution. The company said it has completed a number of tests across all critical elements of the FC/ASW missiles, describing the results as “highly impressive.”

Investment in the weapons program is continuing under the ongoing assessment-phase contract with MBDA, U.K. Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry Maria Eagle said in response to a parliamentary question in September.

The company says FC/ASW is the most technologically advanced missile deep-strike program currently in development. The three countries in the FC/ASW program will operate both missiles, which will be ship and air-launched, according to MBDA.

The firm has manufactured the first prototype of the ultra-low observable missile and performed “extensive” testing of the radio-frequency signature, and has also completed “exhausive” wind-tunnel testing of the ramjet propulsion system for the supersonic missile at the MBDA faciity in Bourges, France. The ramjet missile will operate at high supersonic speeds, but below Mach 5, company officials said.

Other testing completed includes advanced seekers, warheads and aerodynamics for both missiles. Missile design is about 80% fixed, with small modifications still possible, particularly with the arrival of Italy in the program, according to the briefing.

MBDA’s Italian business is strong on missile guidance, already providing that technology for the Aster air-defense missile, and will contribute expertise in that area to the FC/ASW program, the company said.

The attack missiles will have dual missions: ground strike, including suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, and anti-ship warfare. The supersonic missile’s primary mission will be anti-ship, with an additional ground-attack capability, while the stealth missile’s will be focused on ground attack, with an additional anti-ship mission, particularly against docked vessels.

Within the current missile portfolio, the company has started marketing its Naval Cruise Missile for export, with Italy interested in integration of the weapon on an updated version of the multipurpose FREMM frigate. Italian officials said at Euronaval this week that the country’s new PPA multimission vessels will also get the strike missile.

The missile, comparable to Raytheon’s Tomahawk, has previously only been available for the French navy, where it’s known as the Missile de Croisière Naval or McDN, and equips France’s FREMM frigates and nuclear attack submarines.

The missile maker is also offering a ground-launched version of the naval missile, which was unveiled at the Eurosatory show earlier this year. The Land Cruise Missile would be truck-mounted and could be a short-term option for the European Long Range Strike Approach, whose partners include France, Italy, the U.K., Germany, Poland and Sweden, according to the company.

Countries inside Europe as well as outside have expressed interest in the LCM, according to company officials. The naval and land cruise missiles are both sovereign solutions that are “ITAR-free,” so not subject to restrictions under the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations, according to the company.

MBDA presented a longer-range version of its submarine-launched Exocet anti-ship missile, aimed at providing subs from French shipbuilder Naval Group with a self-defense capability. The missile maker says it’s the only European player to provide a sovereign submarine capability, with no equivalent on the market.

Other novelties presented at Euronaval included an update of the TESEO anti-ship missile used by Italy, with double the effective range and featuring a new seeker combining active electronically scanned array and electro-optic technologies. The TESEO Mk2/E was successfully test fired by the Italian navy on Oct. 10, with the qualification phase expected next year, MBDA said.

The ships’ new “EVO” variant, which the Italian Navy may order next year, will get extra Sylver 50 launch modules, which house Aster missiles, but also Sylver 70 launch modules which will fire Aster missiles as well as cruise missiles, including the MdCN naval land-attack missile.

The beefing up of the PPA vessel is the latest example of Italian cash being spent on renewing and upgrading its naval fleet, from new FREMM variants to Italy’s ordered Trieste Landing Helicopter Dock.

Italy has ordered seven PPA vessels from local shipyard Fincantieri, but two of those have now been diverted to Indonesia following a purchase made by the Asian state.

The Italian Navy is set to order two more to make up the deficit and is likely to switch to the EVO configuration for the new buys.

Current PPA versions have two eight-cell Sylver 50 launchers in the forward part of the ship. Two more eight-cell modules will be added in that part of the vessel in the EVO ships. Additionally, a crane will be removed in the centre of the EVO ships to make way for four more modules, each with space for eight missiles.

“At least two of the modules added on the EVO vessels will be Sylver 70,” said a Fincantieri official.

Other upgrades included the introduction of artificial intelligence to support the bridge and the use of a “digital twin” of the vessel to assist maintenance, the official said.

To prepare for the deployment of surface and sub-sea drones from the PPAs, the communication between the bridge and drones will be enhanced.

The first of the two PPA vessels ordered in a €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) deal by Indonesia in March 2024 is due to be delivered by the end of this year.

Fincantieri previously signed to sell six FREMM frigates to Indonesia in 2021.

In July, the Italian Navy signed a €1.5 billion euro contract with Fincantieri and Leonardo for two new, upgraded FREMM frigates, dubbed the FREMM EVO, which will offer enhanced capabilities for defeating drone attacks and operating sub-sea, surface and aerial unmanned systems, among other improvements.

The two new FREMM vessels, which will join ten already ordered by the Italian Navy, will be delivered in 2029 and 2030.

Six EU member states are “very much interested,” including four with bigger navies, Jürgen Scraback, who heads the maritime domain unit at the EDA, told Defense News at the Euronaval conference here, after participating in a panel discussion about the plans.

EU countries are estimated to need at least thirty combat ships in the future, though Scraback said he doesn’t believe all of those would be built within the European Combat Vessel program. The EDA official expects the program budget could exceed €20 billion ($22 billion) in 2024 prices.

“This new generation of vessels will be completely different from the vessels that we have now, because the naval warfare scenario is changing a lot,” said Fernando Miguélez García, chairman of the European Naval Industry Group (ENIG) within the European Aerospace, Security and Defence Industry Association, who was part of the panel discussion.

Design changes would likely entail having a mothership-type capability to carry drones into combat, he added.

EU defense ministers in May tasked the EDA to come up with a concrete project proposal to discuss in November, according to Scraback. The agency held an initial meeting in July to gauge member states’ appetite, followed by a workshop in September to hammer out the high-level requirements for the future vessel.

The future vessel will need to be a compact ship capable of countering “a full spectrum of threats,” including new ones from small UAVs to hypersonic anti-ship missiles, said Ignacio Cuartero, director of the EU Military Staff Concepts and Capabilities directorate within the European External Action Service.

EU defense ministers will meet on Nov. 19 to discuss the project, “so in two weeks’ time, we will get a clear indication what the member states want,” Scraback said. He said Spain and Italy are interested in signing on, while France is not sure yet.

Requirements for the future vessel include a reduced crew, and therefore a high degree of automation, as well as unmanned systems in a range of sizes, according to Scraback.

Based on feedback from member states, the requirement could be for a vessel with a displacement of 8,000 metric tons or more, Scraback said. That’s based on factors such as modularity, the need to embark containerized payloads as well as the ability to equip many small as well as big unmanned systems, according to the EDA official.

By comparison, France’s brand-new FDI defense and intervention frigate displaces 4,500 tons, while the displacement of the French-Italian FREMM frigates is around 6,000 tonnes. The anti-submarine warfare frigates ordered by the Netherlands will have a displacement of 6,650 tons, and Germany’s future F126 frigate will displace around 10,000 tons.

The next generation of combat vessels will have to be “smart ships” that incorporate technologies such as artificial intelligence and a naval combat cloud, according to Cmdr. Alfonso Carrasco of the Spanish Navy’s plans division. Modularity will be important to allow ships to switch between tasks, Carrasco said.

Hypersonic threats will require increased automation and AI to “drastically” reduce reaction time, as well as interconnectivity with other vessels and drones to increase detection capabilities, according to Miguélez García, the ENIG chairman, who is also representative to the EU and NATO for Spanish shipbuilder Navantia.

New directed-energy weapons such as lasers and rail guns will require different types of power generation onboard, including fast energy generation to power those weapons, he said. The future combat vessel will need to be built using new materials such as composites for stealth purposes.

The European naval industry is working to define its technological capability gaps, with the next step seeing how firms can collaborate to close those gaps, according to Miguélez García. The EU industry has “clear gaps” in areas including weapons and sensors, he said.

Companies specialized in weapons are working together to try to define the new types of armaments needed, and how to defend against those weapons, while another group is working on defining the digital architecture and the energy plan required, he said.

The EDA and member states are considering whether to make the future combat vessel a project within the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) framework, which would lock in a commitment by heads of state, Scraback said.

Navies can no longer count on ships staying relevant over their 40-year lifespan, and weapon systems will change “dramatically” over such a period, French Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Nicolas Vaujour said at the Euronaval industry conference outside Paris on Monday. Weapon systems may need to be adapted as frequently as every year, requiring ship architecture that allows for systems to be plugged in and changed when needed, Vaujour said.

“We have to build adaptable by design,” Vaujour said. “You must build the ship to be adaptable during 40 years, which is quite tricky.”

Navies from the U.S., China and Russia, as well as France and the U.K., have been testing maritime weaponry ranging from swarming drones and lasers to hypersonic anti-ship missiles and rail guns in the past three years, while progress in artificial intelligence has allowed for increasingly autonomous unmanned vehicles.

Generational technology change is happening much faster than the time it takes to construct a ship, meaning navies need to implement new capabilities “far quicker than the speed at which we can build a hull,” according to Adm. Sir Ben Key, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff of the U.K.’s Royal Navy.

“So you have to detach the operational capability from the platform that’s going to take you there,” Key said. “That is quite a mindset change for us.”

Ukraine has been using missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and seagoing drones to deny Russia access to much of the Black Sea, despite having little navy to speak of. In the Red Sea, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have targeted commercial vessels with drones and ballistic missiles, prompting freight traffic from Asia to Europe to reroute around Africa.

“If you stay with your old doctrine, you will be dead very rapidly,” Vaujour said. “What we saw in the Red Sea is that we have to adapt very quickly our system.”

The response of the French and British navies to the Houthi threat showed how learning accelerated when the urgency was understood, according to Key.

Both navies worked with MBDA to improve missile performance and software, and “learning time had to be dramatically reduced, because this was no longer a science project being done in the sea off Toulon or in the waters off Plymouth,” Key said.

The lesson was that forces need to be “much sharper” about focusing on the factors that really matter, rather than seeking a perfect solution that will be late, according to the British admiral. That will be a challenge, “because we’ve been brought up in the pursuit of perfection, and actually, we haven’t got time for that,” Key said.

Maritime warfare is experiencing a moment similar to the end of the Age of Sail, when engineers and deep-gunnery specialists became more important on board than the master of sail, according to Key. Going forward, key crew on board will be those able to tap into digital opportunities and needs, the British navy chief said.

“We’re living through kind of one of those moments of really significant change in the way we have to think about the application of power at sea, or maritime power,” Key said.

For the French, one lesson from the Red Sea was that facing a constant threat is “really hard” on crews, and the navy probably needs more people on board, according to Vaujour. “We make the bets to reduce the crew, and I came back from that.”

Systems will be used in ways outside of their design, and crews need “a lot of innovation bias” to come up with untested solutions, according to Vaujour. He cited the use by the French frigate Alsace of a helicopter to shoot down a Houthi drone in March, a scenario that had been tested just weeks earlier in Toulon.

Speeding up innovation will require closer cooperation with industry, according to both admirals. The French navy in coming weeks will start to bring industry engineers on board, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence, to help industrial partners understand the onboard needs and to accelerate innovation, Vaujour said. The admiral is also considering having a vessel dedicated for cutting-edge applications.

As the pace of equipment development accelerates, the U.K. navy is looking to its industrial partners to provide training, as well as for more risk sharing between both sides, Key said.

“What we’re seeing in the Black Sea, what we’re seeing in the southern Red Sea, the speed of development that we’re seeing by some of the navies further afield, requires us to have a much more agile mindset about the way we develop our capabilities,” Key said.

Bpifrance currently provides up to €25 million (US$27 million) of financing for export deals when it’s acting as the single lender and would like to raise that to around €40 million in 2025, Hugues Latourrette, the head of the Bpifrance export-finance department, told Defense News at the Euronaval show outside Paris.

“We’re pushing in that direction because we feel there’s a need,” Latourrette said. While Bpifrance’s limits on export financing affect only a few companies for now, “due to the dynamics of the industry, it’s something that could evolve rapidly.”

The public investment bank fills a market gap, as few large commercial banks are interested in providing small and medium-sized exporters with financing for amounts below €40 million, according to Latourrette. He declined to provide details on the companies seeking export financing from Bpifrance, citing reasons of confidentiality.

Foreign defense markets are “extremely competitive,” and manufacturers from Turkey, South Korea and Israel “can make life difficult for our manufacturers in France,” Latourrette said during a forum discussion at Euronaval. A commercial and technical proposal is not necessarily enough to win an export deal, and often needs to be accompanied by a financial offer, the banker said.

France was the second-largest arms exporter in the 2019-2023 period after the United States, accounting for 11% of global arms exports, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country has around 4,000 small and medium-sized defense-industry firms, according to the Armed Forces Ministry.

Bpifrance helps defense exporters win contracts, including through financing deals on the African continent, and the bank is involved in export negotiations in Europe, Latourrette said. The bank only provides financing in euros, and doesn’t engage in dollar transactions for reasons of extraterritorial action.

The opening day of the Euronaval show, organized here from Nov. 4-7, was a fruitful one for the French naval industry with the announcement of several contracts.

Safran announced that the Egyptian Navy has selected its VIGY 4 optronic sights and Argonyx inertial navigation systems to equip 10 of the country’s offshore patrol vessels to detect and track threats.

According to the company, the short-wave, infra-red technology that powers the sights allows them to be especially effective for missions in settings where visibility is poor, for instance in the dark or through fog.

The VIGY 4 can also drive small and medium-caliber weapons, a Safran press release said.

Another French industrial group to have secured an important contract is Exail, which has been selected for the modernization of the German Navy’s Brandenburg-class frigates, also referred to as F-123.

The company will provide upgrades to the vessels’ navigation capabilities by enhancing its Netans data distribution units and Marins inertial navigation systems to speed up the distribution of information and increase positioning accuracy.

“We are pleased to partner with Arche and Saab to deliver state-of-the-art technology for the Brandenburg-class frigates,” Jens Higgen, regional sales director at Exail stated in a company announcement, referring to the other contractors on the frigate program.

On the sidelines of the exhibition, Naval Group also signed an Initial Consortium Agreement with Spanish and Italian shipbuilding companies Navantia and Fincantieri, as well as Naviris, a joint venture between the latter and the French company.

The partnership will strive to execute the second phase of the multirole patrol (MMPC) project, which builds on the foundations of the European Patrol Corvette initiated under a European Union-sponsored program.

The new phase will see the competition of the design of the corvettes as well as the integration of new technological packages to allow the vessels to be equipped with a variety of systems and payloads to perform a wider range of operations.

The French-built missile, dubbed the SM40, is the latest variant of the Exocet family. The main elements that differentiate it from its predecessor, the SM39, is the integration of a new J-Band radio-frequency seeker, new algorithms tailored for high-intensity environments, and twice the reach, company officials told Defense News.

“It features a doubled range in the class of 120km with a new turbojet engine, to regain the stand-off distance in anti-submarine warfare,” Pierre-Marie Bealleau, head of business development for deep strike missiles at MBDA, said.

Belleau added that the SM40 was designed solely to equip Naval Group-made submarines, which indicates that the two systems will share the same customer range established by the French shipbuilder globally.

The SM39 is in service with several navies across the world, including France and India.

While the new submarine-launched variant is tailored to defeat highly protected combat vessels and stealth targets, Belleau noted that it also features a land attack capability, “to defeat ship at harbor, for instance.”

Similarly to its predecessor, the SM40 also uses the same launch method: a propelled and guided underwater vehicle. The missile is housed in the vehicle and is ejected once it breaks the water surface at a low altitude.

The SM40 is not yet in production, but according to the MBDA representative, given that it is based on existing and mature technological blocks, the time needed to put it on the market should be considerably reduced.

At the Euronaval show here, organized here from November 4-7, MBDA is showcasing an Exocet MM40 B3C in order to mark the 4,000th Exocet missile produced, per a company press release.

There was a reason for the special attention. Paris has aggressively pursued increased ties to Athens’ military in recent years, including signing a strategic partnership in 2021, and it succeeded in netting a contract in March to build three new frigates for the Hellenic navy. But other nations, including the United States, United Kingdom, and others are also building new partnerships with Greece, and companies at Euronaval showed concerted interest in courting the nation for shipyard partnerships.

A major program to recapitalize Greece’s corvette fleet has recently stalled, Defense News has learned. But that hasn’t stopped the competitors from signing new contracts with local suppliers to shore up support once the program moves forward.

France’s Naval Group, the Netherlands’ Damen, the UK’s Babcock, Italy’s Fincantieri, and the United States’ Lockheed Martin have all thrown their hats into the ring for the corvette replacement effort. But the Greek navy has for now put the program on pause, Jonathan Walton, Babcock’s vice president of business development for marine and technology at Babcock International Group, told Defense News Oct. 20 at the company’s booth at Euronaval.

Babcock had proposed its Arrowhead 140 frigate — the basis for the Royal Navy’s Type 31 frigates currently in construction — for Greece’s frigate replacement program, initially, and now the corvette replacement. The British shipyard had also initiated agreements “in principle” with local suppliers in Greece to sweeten the deal, said Walton.

Requests for comment to the Greek Ministry of Defense on the status of the corvette program were not returned before publication.

France’s Naval Group has proposed its GoWind 2500 multipurpose corvette for the Hellenic Navy. The company is slated to build three new Belharra-class FDI HN (frégates de défense et d’intervention for the Hellenic Navy) frigates and an optional fourth, out of its shipyards in Lorient in the north of France, due for delivery in 2025 and 2026. The company announced Oct. 21 the first FDI HN block was laid down in dry dock, launching the assembly phase.

Since the FDI HN program launched in March, Naval Group has signed about 20 contracts to reinforce relations with Greek shipbuilding industry partners, including seven at Euronaval during the meeting between the two defense ministers. Those agreements extend to efforts outside of the FDI program as well as future projects, and include on-site job training as well, the company said.

Italy, the United States, and the Netherlands are also working to woo the Greeks.

Lockheed Martin vied for the frigate construction program alongside Naval Group, and for a time was pursuing options to nab a contract to build several additional ships. That letter of agreement has since expired, company officials told reporters Oct. 19 at the Euronaval conference.

The company is continuing to make inroads with the Hellenic shipbuilding industry to develop “an indigenous design for a smaller vessel, Corvette sized,” as well as an integrated combat system, said Joe DiPietro, vice president and general manager for naval combat and missile defense systems.

Meanwhile, Lockheed is continuing to pursue a contract to upgrade Greece’s four Hydra-class MEKO frigates, said Dawn Brenner, business development director for small combatants and ship systems. The U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin offered a bid in December 2021 that was due to expire the following March. The offer was extended to September, however, and has since been extended a second time, to December, at the request of the Hellenic Navy, she said.

This letter of agreement would involve the integration of Lockheed Martin’s suite of products centered around the Aegis combat management system (CMS), namely putting the COMBATSS-21 CMS on the MEKO frigates, alongside Lockheed’s Mark 41 vertical launching system and Sikorsky’s MH-60 Seahawk helicopters. Greece has committed to buying seven MH-60 aircraft, with deliveries scheduled to begin at the end of 2023, according to Mark Zavack, head of Sikorsky international business development.

The company has had regular meetings with Hellenic Shipyard, and would likely modernize the MEKO frigates on site there, DiPietro previously told Defense News.

Babcock has also submitted a proposal to upgrade the MEKO frigates, highlighting their experience modernizing such ships for the Australia and New Zealand’s navies, Walton said.

Fincantieri announced Oct. 12 it had signed several memorandums of understanding with “a selection of new suppliers” at the Italian Embassy in Athens. The agreements would serve the Greek Navy’s program to build four new corvettes with a lighter version of its Doha-class light frigate.

“Fincantieri has carried out scouting activities in Greece in order to identify suppliers to start potential collaborations with reference to the existing Greek program or any new naval vessels program, with the main goal of strengthening the Group’s cooperation with Hellenic companies,” the company said in a release.

Damen Shipyards has offered its SIGMA 10514 vessel, recently selected by the Colombian navy for its frigate replacement program, and has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hellenic Marine Equipment Manufacturers & Exporters group to work with over 60 local suppliers, should the company win the contract, a spokesperson said in an email to Defense News.

Judging by the offerings at the Euronaval trade show in Paris last month, there is a trend among developers to offer kinetic, or hard-kill, interceptors capable of overcoming the seeker trickery that large, modern torpedoes now boast to sniff out targets.

The concept of blowing up torpedoes as they approach follows a trend of decoys becoming increasingly ineffective against torpedoes capable of turning around and reengaging a ship after missing it on the first pass — potentially for hours, said Johannes Peters, a naval analyst at Kiel University in Germany.

The global proliferation of torpedo-carrying submarines makes the challenge all the more grave, he said. “Submarines are the weapon of choice to challenge a superior surface navy,” he explained.

Germany’s Atlas Elektronik, which is part of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, exhibited the state of play of its SeaSpider anti-torpedo torpedo at Euronaval. The firm aims to begin production of the surface vessel version in 2025, with a submarine-borne variant following a few years later, a company official said.

In practice, the SeaSpider would launch within seconds of detecting an incoming torpedo, and then destroy the weapon at short range, said the official. The surface variant could fit aboard large surface vessels like frigates, as well as smaller vessels like corvettes and offshore patrol vessels, and be installed in dedicated fixed launchers.

Also at Euronaval, Israel’s DSIT Solutions presented a new counter-torpedo suite for submarines. It combines the company’s hull-mounted sonar sensor and parent company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ anti-torpedo defense system. The setup involves a decoy named Torbuster, launched at a safe distance from the ship, designed to “seduce” the incoming torpedo with acoustic signals, only to blow up when its near, Rafael explains on its website.

According to Hanan Marom, a Rafael vice president of marketing and business development, the company has an “internal project” to make Torbuster work from aboard surface ships. The variant must be smaller, lighter and deployable by way of existing rocket launchers on vessels, Marom said.

But the technology may not work against more advanced seekers programmed to find and follow a ship’s wake. Simply put, those wake-homing torpedoes are feared because they are impossible to seduce through song. The weapons engage their targets by aligning themselves with the bubbles of a ship’s propulsion system — it may take several passes to identify the right ship — and approach from behind.

“Torpedoes are no longer the simple impact-fuze weapons we know from classic movies like ‘Das Boot,’ ” Peters said. Modern torpedoes are typically connected by long wires to submarine operators, enabling eccentric maneuvers, he explained. Some can also travel stealthily on electric propulsion.

Rather than directly hitting targets, they are programmed to explode below a ship, launching the vessel upward and causing it to break apart up on the fall, according to Peters.

In naval warfare, once a torpedo is fired, “you normally don’t have much a of a chance,” he added.

Still, companies like Atlas, DSIT and Rafael claim they can change the odds with their packages of sensors and interceptors.

According to a ThyssenKrupp official at Euronaval, more than a half dozen navies are interested in the new technology when it comes to market, including the United States and the U.K.

The German Navy was interested, but an acquisition fell through for “political” reasons, according to Peters. It remains to be seen if the service’s new ships, like the F126 frigate, will feature the SeaSpider, particularly as Germans have a new threat perception of Russia following Moscow’s assault on Ukraine, he added.

Atlas previously advertised the SeaSpider’s utility in shallow waters, like those of the Baltic Sea — Germany’s maritime connection with Russia.

For now, SeaSpider may have more luck on the other side of the Atlantic. Atlas and ThyssenKrupp in 2019 struck an industry partnership with rocket engine-maker Magellan Aerospace, based in Canada, to further develop the technology.

A ThyssenKrupp spokesman told Defense News the company is keeping an eye on the Canadian Surface Combatant program — estimated to cost $62 billion to design and buy 15 of the envisioned multirole ships — as a prospective user. But no sale had been made to that end.

According to American contractor Lockheed Martin, the program nears a key design review milestone at the end of the year. The Royal Canadian Navy wants those vessels to start replacing older ships ships in the early 2030s.

Seth J. Frantzman in Jerusalem and Vivienne Machi in Paris contributed to this report.