MILAN — French and Turkish naval companies are keeping close tabs on industry efforts to create a kinetic torpedo interceptor, readying their own technological approaches to take to market if navies overcome their apprehension towards the futuristic concept.
For decades, navies across the world have experimented with a wide range of countermeasures to distract, confuse, and strike incoming torpedoes, notoriously cunning threats to warships. But results, so far, are mixed.
Now, a growing consensus among industry experts suggests that the ability to physically intercept enemy torpedoes is something like the holy grail in a cat-and-mouse game that favors the attacker.
“In the future, due to the development of torpedo systems and how smart they have become, sometimes deceiving or jamming it will not be enough – at that time you must have additional capabilities, which can include a hard-kill measure,” Ahmet Akyol, president of Turkey’s Aselsan said during a panel discussion at Euronaval trade show in Paris last month.
Both Aselsan and Naval Group independently confirmed to Defense News that they are each conducting research and developmental work to build hard-kill torpedo countermeasures, which presents its own set of complexities.
Underwater targeting is much harder than in the air, due to the laws of physics, and while torpedoes move slower than cruise missiles, they are still challenging to detect.
Antoine Kauffman, marketing manager for underwater systems at Naval Group, said it is in part the unique challenges found in the deep-sea environment that help explain “why many systems [anti-torpedo torpedoes] are not yet sufficiently mature to be integrated into militaries.”
Although several kinetic torpedo interceptors have already been developed, much of their lethal capability has yet to be tested, and their reliability remains largely uncertain.
One existing system is the Torbuster manufactured by Israel’s Rafael, which employs generic or tailored acoustic signals to lure an incoming torpedo near a decoy which explodes at close range, a mechanism that does not convince Kauffman.
“We do not believe in it at all because it is based on ‘seduction’ where you need to be able to attract the torpedo less than 20 meters of the countermeasure and never will it go that close – the torpedo will understand well before,” he told Defense News ahead of the Euronaval conference.
The Indian Navy is the only known international customer to have purchased Torbuster following Rafael’s announcement in May that it was partnering with local company Bharat Dynamics Limited to equip Indian ships with the technology.
Kauffman predicted that the maturity of concepts and designs of hard-kill torpedo technology will be more or less around 2030.
This timeline concurs with the one set out by the European Defense Agency regarding an anti-torpedo torpedo (ATT) demonstrator project, which builds on previous work done by Germany’s Atlas Elektronik and the Dutch TNO research organization.
“The objective is to reach a production-ready design by 2028 – it has [already] been proven that the system can successfully detect the attacking torpedo and subsequently activate the anti-torpedo torpedo, indicating that the desired effect can be achieved,” Jürgen Scraback, head of the EDA’s maritime domain unit said.
The official added that negotiations are currently underway for more European Union member states to join the project.
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.
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