QinetiQ has installed a new six-metre water tank at the MOD Portland Bill facility in Dorset, expanding the site’s ability to test and tune the magnetic signatures of the uncrewed mine-hunting vessels now coming into service with the Royal Navy and reducing the risk that they trigger the very mines they are meant to find, the company said.
The tank, which measures six metres by two metres and is a metre and a half deep, sits alongside existing medium and smaller tanks at the site and is large enough to accommodate the uncrewed underwater vehicles being procured under Britain’s Mine Hunting Capability programme. According to QinetiQ, the new tank lets engineers record the magnetic data given off by each vessel and by its individual components, building up the unique signature each platform leaves as it disturbs the earth’s magnetic field, the same signature that sea mines key on to detonate.
MOD Portland Bill is operated by QinetiQ on behalf of the Ministry of Defence under the Long Term Partnering Agreement, and the facility also certifies uncrewed vessels as safe to operate in mine-threat, explosive ordnance disposal and unexploded ordnance environments before they are sent out into the real thing. Testing is carried out inside a magnetically controlled area equipped with a large coil system able to replicate any magnetic field on Earth or to push the field down to zero, an environment the company says is essential to getting accurate signature readings.
Jim Graham, QinetiQ’s managing director for maritime and land, said the investment showed the company’s commitment to helping the Royal Navy “deploy safely and enhance the maritime security of all allied nations at pace”, framing the new facility as part of the wider effort to bring uncrewed and autonomous minefighting kit into operational service quickly.
The company is also opening the larger tank to outside users through what it calls its Innovation Gateway, with Graham saying the doors are open to firms developing the next generation of uncrewed underwater and surface vessels to come in and have their own platforms tested.
QinetiQ has been measuring and helping to reduce the magnetism of the UK’s underwater military assets for more than a decade, working with the Royal Navy to make sure ships and submarines know what they look like to a mine and then to make them look like as little as possible.
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