Israel Aerospace Presents Unmanned Submarine ‘BlueWhale’ for Covert Ops

Israel’s state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has presented the BlueWhale Large Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for the first time.

This boat has already undergone thousands of autonomous operation hours, including intelligence-gathering for both maritime and coastal targets, acoustic intelligence, and identifying the presence of naval mines. The autonomous submarine can perform a significant portion of the operations of a manned submarine, for periods of several weeks, at minimal cost and maintenance, without the need for operators on board.

Like manned submarines, BlueWhale performs covert intelligence-gathering above the sea surface, can detect submarines, underwater targets and gather acoustic intelligence, and also search for and detect naval mines on the seabed.

BlueWhale is equipped with a telescopic mast, like the periscope of a manned submarine, several meters high, on which are mounted radar and electro-optical systems for detecting sea and coastal targets. By using a satellite communications antenna on the mast, the gathered data can be transferred in real-time to command posts, anywhere in the world, at sea or on land. Submarine detection and acoustic intelligence-gathering data is enabled using a sonar, several tens of meters long, towed by the BlueWhale, and by flank array sonar with receiver arrays attached to both sides of the platform.