The European Union (EU) has selected unmanned aerial system (UAS) produced by Austrian detectors and helicopter manufacturing company, Schiebel, as the airborne platform for a major new anti-submarine warfare initiative to strengthen Europe’s ability to detect and counter underwater threats.
The drone, CAMCOPTER S-300, will support the European First AustralianBuilt AS9 Huntsman Howitzers Defense Fund-backed SWORD (Stand-off anti-submarine Warfare Operations by Remote Deployment) programmw, a 36-month project led by TKMS ATLAS ELEKTRONIK that seeks to develop a “sensor-to-shooter” capability allowing naval forces to detect, track, classify, and potentially engage hostile submarines from greater standoff distances.
According to Schiebel, the project will bring together a consortium of European defense and technology partners to develop future anti-submarine warfare (ASW) concepts.
The selection marks one of the first major European defence programmes to incorporate Schiebel’s newest heavy-lift unmanned helicopter platform, which has been undergoing f light testing and customer evaluations over the past two years.
The announcement follows growing concern across Europe over undersea security. In recent years, attacks on critical infrastructure such as pipelines and subsea communication cables have exposed the vulnerability of underwater assets.
At the same time, European navies are increasingly focused on tracking submarine activity in strategically important waters, including the Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic.
The SWORD project is designed to address those challenges by creating a distributed anti-submarine warfare architecture that can deploy sensors farther from manned warships. According to project information published by Schiebel, the goal is to create an integrated system capable of detecting and tracking underwater threats while reducing risk to crewed naval platforms.
Rather than relying exclusively on ships and manned helicopters, future ASW operations could increasingly employ unmanned aircraft, autonomous surface vessels, and remote sensor networks working together.
The CAMCOPTER S-300 is Schiebel’s largest unmanned helicopter to date and represents a substantial evolution of the company’s widely deployed S-100 platform, which is already used by several navies and government agencies worldwide.
