What is the importance of CEOM for both the Portuguese Navy and NATO?
The Navy’s Operational Experiment Center is a center with an adjacent technological zone first created in Portugal, the Infante D. Henrique Technological Free Zone. In this sense, we have here the possibilities to conduct operational experiments that promote the development of new maritime employment technologies. These technologies are generally dual-use, that is, they can respond to non-military as well as military needs. Here we have access to the air environment, the surface environment, the underwater environment and the terrestrial environment and in addition we have access to the deep sea, the deep sea, since we have the Setúbal Gorge nearby. All this forms the environment in which we promote operational experimentation to develop emerging and disruptive technologies, with a very special focus on unmanned maritime employment systems.
Does that make Troy an ideal place to test drones?
The location is ideal and in addition to the location, work has been done here since 2010, when we started the REPMUS exercise, in which a group of international entities and stakeholders participated. At the moment, a very large interest group has emerged around this in which the Portuguese Navy occupies a central position. That’s why the other countries of the Alliance, and beyond, are coming here for REPMUS, the world’s largest exercise in experimenting with these new technologies. NATO itself asked us two years ago to conduct its own exercise, the first of experiments with operational systems, together with REPMUS, to take advantage not only of the facilities, but also of the knows how, learn from what we already did at REPMUS and therefore participate in the exercise. This year sees the second edition of Dynamic Messenger, the NATO exercise that conducts this experiment and they are doing it here together with us.
We are talking about Portugal leading a high-tech process, and in addition to having very advanced NATO countries here, we also have observers like Japan and South Korea who we all associate with high technology. Can you learn from what we do here?
They can and do learn. Unmanned systems in the maritime domain are more complex. They require a capacity for resilience, resistance to the environment and connection with other systems that are already manned, since we have ships in the same space, which makes the development of these technologies more difficult. . Above all, the development of the ability to operate systems in a multi-domain environment involving air, surface and submarine forces. Doing all this at the same time is extremely complex, so it is not surprising that highly technological companies and highly technological countries are participating or observing here. It is important to note that those who participate have access to a range of information that those who observe do not.
Does the fact that of the three branches, the Navy invests the most in these technologies have to do with the country’s characteristics, namely our vast maritime space?
One of the main reasons why humanity developed drones, unmanned systems, was the ability to perform and develop three tasks, namely the three D’s, which in English “Dangerous, dirty and boring“, that is, performing dangerous tasks where men cannot reach, performing tasks in dirty places where we do not want to go and performing very long and boring tasks where we lose focus after a while. But today in Today, more and more unmanned systems have also another component that must be more efficient in performing their tasks and it is in this sense that we really need these systems to deal with a Navy of the size of which we are currently organizing our maritime spaces efficiently and effectively.
Do we already have greater capacity thanks to what has been done since 2010?
We have invested heavily in technology development, experimentation and knowledge development. We are now in a phase of acceleration towards more effective operational use of these systems. To that end, the Navy recently created a new unit, Unit X31, which unifies the use of all of the Navy’s unmanned systems. So right now we’re accelerating this operational capability by drinking and capitalizing on all the work we’ve done in technology development and experimentation.
From a more fundamental point of view, understandable to humans, there are aerial drones, surface and underwater drones, and land drones. Does Portugal have them all?
We have them all and we try them all here throughout the year and during this exercise on land, surface, submarine and in the air. The buzzword we use a lot here is MUS”maritime unmanned systems“, which for NATO means that all drones that can be used in maritime operations are maritime drones. Even if they are on land or in the air, as long as they are drones used in maritime operations, they are. “maritime unmanned systems“. Therefore, REPMUS means, exercise, means Robot experiments and prototyping supplemented with maritime unmanned systemsand this one maritime unmanned systems they actually come from all domains.
The various potential threats addressed in Dynamic Messenger range from floating mines to attacks on submarine cables. Is protection against attacks on submarine cables a priority in the case of a country like Portugal?
It is clearly a priority for the country because we have several submarine cables here that cross our spaces. Portugal and Europe are highly dependent on data flows, mainly via submarine cables. This flow of data not only affects the exchange of information, but even financial transactions are carried out through this medium on a daily basis and therefore any disruption to these cables will have a huge impact on our society.
Is this one of the aspects of the exercise that we are now witnessing?
This is one of the aspects of the exercise that we are looking at and furthermore, taking into account the size of the task, because the number of cables is enormous, the spaces involved and the area underwater, it would be difficult for us to carry this monitoring without expanding the resources to state-of-the-art technologies, including acoustics and other systems. Therefore, it is an area where we must continue to develop our capabilities and invest.
Therefore, even in NATO, Portugal must have an autonomous capacity to defend its sovereignty and interests. Is this an opportunity for the sector?
This is a unique opportunity to develop the national industry that produces drones, that produces artificial intelligence, that produces high value-added technology, and this is one of the areas where we have fallen behind. We are currently in a situation where we are working with the best in the world in this area and our industry must benefit from this. We need to create industries that solve these problems, and because they are new problems, that is easier. Why? Because there is no industry legacy that can compete in these new areas. Therefore, together with start-ups and small industries, we have managed to leverage these and make them do very important and interesting things in a short time for other users who have problems and that is important for the country. And yet we have managed to retain brains here, people who have completed the most sought-after courses and were able to work abroad.
So will it defend sovereignty in a different way?
Clearly. There is a need to use this to create a technological hub around this domain, which will also put Portugal at the forefront in economic terms, so that we do not have to buy everything abroad. When we look at it, our naval industry is largely based on steel, on making ships, while other countries do the filling, but the ships are worth 5% or 10%, it’s what’s in them that’s worth it. It is a process that we must reverse.
Source: DN
