AUV62-AT

The AUV62-AT is a full-size autonomous underwater vehicle built by Saab Kockums to act as a stand-in submarine during anti-submarine warfare exercises. Roughly 7.5 metres long and torpedo-shaped, the vehicle is launched from a surface ship or shore facility and then runs a programmed mission on its own, presenting to hunting frigates, maritime patrol aircraft and helicopters the same acoustic, magnetic and hydrodynamic signature a real boat would. The system entered Swedish service in the mid-2000s and has since become one of the most widely used ASW training targets in northern Europe.

The vehicle’s value lies in how closely it imitates a submarine across the sensor bands that hunters actually use. An onboard acoustic projector reproduces the radiated noise of a chosen target class, with parameters loaded for the specific exercise — a diesel-electric boat on batteries, a snorting submarine, or a quieter modern design. A magnetic coil array generates a magnetic anomaly tuned to mimic a steel-hulled hull, allowing crews to train against MAD-equipped maritime patrol aircraft. The hydrodynamic profile and slow, deliberate manoeuvring round out the picture for passive sonar operators. Navigation is autonomous and waypoint-driven, with the AUV62-AT capable of multi-hour missions at depths and speeds matching the boat it is impersonating. The same hull serves as the basis for the AUV62-MR variant, a survey vehicle aimed at mine reconnaissance and seabed mapping, which shares the underlying autonomy stack.

Sweden was the launch customer and continues to operate the system from the Karlskrona naval base alongside its ASW frigates and helicopters. Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands have all acquired or operated AUV62-ATs for their own training programmes, and the vehicle has appeared in multinational exercises in the Baltic and the North Sea, where the resurgent attention on Russian submarine activity has pushed NATO members to step up their hunting practice. The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, FMV, has placed follow-on orders to keep the fleet current, and the system is regularly used in joint drills with NATO partners.

Saab Kockums has continued to evolve the platform, updating the signature library as new submarine classes enter service and extending mission endurance. The AUV62-AT competes in a small field — Atlas Elektronik’s SeaFox and a handful of other European autonomous targets occupy adjacent niches — but its full-size, multi-physics emulation distinguishes it from smaller decoys and keeps it embedded in the training cycles of the navies that need to know whether they can find the next generation of quiet Russian boats before those boats find them.