The Royal Norwegian Navy has taken delivery of new acoustic minesweeping systems from the Finnish firm Patria.
This marks the completion of Norway’s order of SONAC ACS systems in 2021 at an undisclosed amount, with the first batch delivered early last year.
Following the navy’s retirement of its ELMA-AGATE sweep, the Finnish systems will take over the job of clearing minefields as part of Oslo’s mine countermeasures capabilities.
“SONAC ACS has so far offered excellent handling and very promising performance, operation and reliability. The Norwegian Navy considers this new influence minesweeping capability as one of the most sophisticated influence minesweeping in service today,” said Commander Bengt Berdal.
Acoustic Sweep System
Patria’s SONAC ACS is a compact and lightweight system that can be towed by crewed and uncrewed maritime vessels.
The 260-centimeter-long (8 feet) system is designed with a streamlined cylindrical tow body for minimized drag and can be mounted onto an external frame or used with a float.
On land, it weighs 400 to 500 kilograms (881 to 1,102 pounds), but when submerged, its weight is reduced to 180 to 220 kilograms (396 to 485 pounds).
It features advanced acoustics that can mimic any ship’s sound with excellent sound quality across various frequencies ranging from infra- to ultrasonic bands at 7 Hz to 70 kHz.
This makes it difficult for a mine to distinguish between a genuine vessel and a SONAC ACS, which can cause it to detonate prematurely.
As such, it proves useful in three different modes: mine setting, target simulation, and mine jamming.
Additionally, operators can easily choose a wide variety of acoustic signals from the system’s library or design custom signals to suit mission requirements.
