AUV62

The AUV62 is a family of autonomous underwater vehicles built by Saab Kockums , the submarine and naval-systems arm of the Swedish defence group. First fielded around 2010 and developed at the Karlskrona shipyard that has long supplied the Swedish Navy with its conventional submarines, the AUV62 was designed as a modular platform: the same hull and propulsion system can be configured either as a mobile target for anti-submarine warfare training or as a survey vehicle for mine reconnaissance. Roughly seven metres long and torpedo-shaped, it operates from surface ships, harbours, or shore facilities and can stay submerged for more than twenty-four hours at a time.

Two variants dominate the family. The AUV62-AT, the anti-submarine training configuration, carries an acoustic payload that emits the sound signature of a real submarine, allowing surface ships, helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft to rehearse hunts against a target that manoeuvres, dives and emits like the genuine article. Operators can program a mission, launch the vehicle, and let it execute the run autonomously while logging the prosecution from the trainees. The AUV62-MR, the mine reconnaissance variant, swaps the acoustic kit for a high-resolution side-scan and synthetic aperture sonar suite and is used to map the seabed for mine-like objects in advance of amphibious or harbour-clearance operations. Both variants share the same navigation stack, combining inertial measurement, doppler velocity logging and acoustic positioning to hold a course without GPS while submerged.

Sweden is the lead operator and has used the AUV62 to train its own ASW forces in the Baltic, where Russian submarine activity has driven a sustained rebuild of Swedish underwater surveillance since the mid-2010s. The United States Navy selected the AUV62-AT in 2016 under a contract worth roughly fifty million dollars to replace its aging mobile submarine simulator system, and the vehicle now supports US fleet ASW training on both coasts. Finland has acquired the system as part of the Finnish Navy’s broader push to harden Baltic surveillance, and several other NATO and Nordic operators have run evaluations.

Saab continues to iterate on the platform — successive deliveries have widened the depth envelope and integrated newer sonar payloads — and the AUV62-MR in particular sits inside a broader Saab push into unmanned mine-countermeasures, alongside the smaller Sea Wasp and the surface-launched MuMNS family. Among ASW training targets it has few direct competitors at its size class, which is part of why a Swedish boat ended up in American training fleets.