According to a press release issued by the French Naval Group on November 26, the company announced the establishment of its subsidiary Belgian Naval Group (MCM) Excellence Research and Development Center, which is the third center of excellence established by the French Naval Group abroad.
Schematic diagram of the future minesweeper (picture source: Navy Group)
The Naval Group’s R&D Center of Excellence will cooperate with Belgium in a collaboration called the Mine Countermeasures Laboratory. Under the coordination of the Belgian Navy Group, the Mine Countermeasures Laboratory was launched on November 25, where the first formal meeting was held and the signed conventions were exchanged.
The Mine Countermeasures Laboratory is one of the key components of the industrial cooperation program related to the Belgian-Netherlands Remote Mine Countermeasures Replacement Program (rMCM), which was awarded to the Belgian Navy and Robotics Company in 2019. The consortium consists of the Navy Group and the ECA Group . The consortium was selected by the Belgian and Royal Dutch navies to provide 12 minesweepers and a toolbox consisting of about 100 unmanned boats.
One of the main goals of the Mine Countermeasures Laboratory is to strengthen the Belgian Defense Industry and Technology Base (DTIB)'s capabilities in strategic technologies such as marine robots, enhanced detection capabilities, and artificial intelligence applications to achieve a wider range of anti-mine capabilities. The strength of the research laboratory is to include partners with complementary technical skills and innovative methods. It will promote and promote close cooperation between universities, industry and research institutions to carry out research and development activities to accelerate the development of innovation and prepare for the development of the mine warfare system.
The mine countermeasures laboratory is the French Navy Group, the Belgian Navy Group, ECA Robotics, ECA Belgian Robotics, British-Belgian Company (ABC), Belgian Advanced Technology Systems, Dortmund Marine, and Space Application Services (Space Applications Services), a collaborative project between Ghent University, the Free University of Brussels, and the Flemish Institute of Oceanography (VLIZ). Cooperation between laboratory partners has been around high-value functions such as robotics, artificial intelligence or acoustic judgment. The five partners of the laboratory are also part of the European project MIRICLE, which will be launched in early December this year to define the future of mine warfare.
In 2019, Belgium and the Netherlands signed a contract to jointly purchase 12 new generation mine hunters. Two French companies, MIRICLE and Eca-Robotics Sasu, have won this contract with an investment of approximately 1.1 billion euros from each country, which will ensure an important share of production in Belgium. The contract lasts for 10 years.
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