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New uncrewed vessels to support Royal Navy minehunting operations
25 February 2025
The Royal Navy’s experts in finding and clearing underwater threats have taken charge of three new uncrewed vessels to help with mine hunting and survey operations.
The Mine and Threat Exploitation Group are now using three new Iver4 580 uncrewed underwater vessels (UUVs) delivered by L3 Harris.
The systems detect underwater objects such as mines and other items of interest without putting sailors and divers at risk, offering additional and advanced support to the autonomous systems already being used by the Royal Navy.
The slimline Iver4 vehicles – around two metres long – are capable of operating for hours at a time at depths up to nearly 1,000ft.
They are now in the hands of MTXG’s Zulu Squadron as part of the UK’s minehunting capability (MHC) programme.
As part of its ongoing work to develop minehunting within the Royal Navy, the new equipment allows operations at deeper depths and enables near-continuous deployment.
Following the delivery by L3 Harris, Zulu Squadron spent time trialling the Iver4s so sailors could get familiar with them and their additional uses.
Equipped with highly-accurate navigation sensors, automatic systems and advanced communication surface tracking, the UUVs help with MTXG’s uncrewed minehunting operations as well as conducting route survey operations of UK waters and international waters.
The survey operations ensure safe navigation for both commercial and military shipping.
MTXG, the successor to the previously known Mine Counter Measures Squadron 1, is working to use cutting-edge autonomous and uncrewed technology on operations to improve its ability to protect, find and neutralise underwater threats in waters both in the UK and abroad.
Comprising X-ray, Yankee and Zulu Squadrons, the Mine and Threat Exploitation Group is continuing to support a range of front-line missions across the fleet.