Koge Marina, Denmark — From a distance they appear nearly like abnormal sailboats, their sails emblazoned with the red-and-white flag of Denmark.
However these 10-meter-long (30-foot-long) vessels carry no crew and are designed for surveillance.
4 uncrewed robotic sailboats, referred to as “Voyagers,” have been put into service by Denmark’s armed forces for a three-month operational trial.
Constructed by Alameda, California-based firm Saildrone, the vessels will patrol Danish and NATO waters within the Baltic and North Seas, the place maritime tensions and suspected sabotage have escalated sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Two of the Voyagers launched Monday from Koge Marina, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Copenhagen. Powered by wind and photo voltaic power, these sea drones can function autonomously for months at sea. Saildrone says the vessels carry superior sensor suites — radar, infrared and optical cameras, sonar and acoustic monitoring.
Their launch comes after two others already joined a NATO patrol on June 6.
Saildrone founder and CEO Richard Jenkins in contrast the vessels to a “truck” that carries sensors and makes use of machine studying and synthetic intelligence to provide a “full image of what is above and beneath the floor” to about 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 kilometers) within the open ocean.
He stated that maritime threats like harm to undersea cables, unlawful fishing and the smuggling of individuals, weapons and medicines are going undetected just because “nobody’s observing it.”
Saildrone, he stated, is “going to locations … the place we beforehand didn’t have eyes and ears.”
The Danish Protection Ministry says the trial is geared toward boosting surveillance capability in under-monitored waters, particularly round essential undersea infrastructure comparable to fiber-optic cables and energy traces.
“The safety scenario within the Baltic is tense,” stated Lt. Gen. Kim Jørgensen, the director of Danish Nationwide Armaments on the ministry. “They’re going to cruise Danish waters, after which later they’re going to affix up with the 2 which can be on (the) NATO train. After which they’ll transfer from space to space throughout the Danish waters.”
The trial comes as NATO confronts a wave of injury to maritime infrastructure — together with the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions and the rupture of not less than 11 undersea cables since late 2023. The latest incident, in January, severed a fiber-optic hyperlink between Latvia and Sweden’s Gotland island.
The trial additionally unfolds in opposition to a backdrop of trans-Atlantic friction — with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration threatening to grab Greenland, a semiautonomous territory belonging to Denmark, a NATO ally. Trump has stated he would not rule out navy pressure to take Greenland.
Jenkins, the founding father of Saildrone, famous that his firm had already deliberate to open its operation in Denmark earlier than Trump was reelected. He did not wish to touch upon the Greenland matter, insisting the corporate is not political.
A number of the maritime disruptions have been blamed on Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — getting older oil tankers working beneath opaque possession to keep away from sanctions. One such vessel, the Eagle S, was seized by Finnish police in December for allegedly damaging an influence cable between Finland and Estonia with its anchor.
Amid these issues, NATO is transferring to construct a layered maritime surveillance system combining uncrewed floor autos just like the Voyagers with conventional naval ships, satellites and seabed sensors.
“The problem is that you just mainly have to be on the water on a regular basis, and it’s humongously costly,” stated Peter Viggo Jakobsen of the Royal Danish Defence Faculty. “It’s just too costly for us to have a warship trailing each single Russian ship, be it a warship or a civilian freighter of some type.”
“We’re attempting to place collectively a layered system that can allow us to maintain fixed monitoring of potential threats, however at a less expensive degree than earlier than,” he added.
