Conference

The UDT conference is the definitive forum addressing the key issues in the undersea defence community. With over 120 speakers from a multitude of nations, the conference will address military requirements in the ever changing landscape of undersea maritime security and force protection.

Open systems for interoperability and combat systems need to be analysed and taken into consideration between submarines. This session will be looking at the following:

• Open System Architectures
• Sensor Fusion
• Decision Support/Artificial Intelligence
• Human/Computer Interfaces
• System Integrity and Security

Accurate and timely assessment is crucial for naval operations in complex and littoral environments. This session will explore and evaluate the factors effecting the undersea community and will be focussing on:

• The impact of sound on marine life
• Acoustical modelling
• Rapid environmental assessment
• Instrumentation and ranges

This session will explore the following sessions

• "tools and tasks in littoral operations"
• "ranges and instrumentation"

During recent years there have been significant changes to the previous clear distinctions in the defence responsibilities of countries, states and smaller communities. It is becoming clear that nations and vital economic international networks must strive to improve their intrinsic resilience to this world of tensions, reshaping both defence forces and civil security for this purpose. Although defence budgets continue to be limited, it appears to be essential to ensure that plans for new investments take account of the need to achieve such resilience, including effective exploitation of the seas around Europe which remain areas of significant uncertainty and vulnerability. This session will appeal to non-defence actors such as: Port Authorities, Ministries of Transportation, Regional Authorities, Main Sea Port Authorities and Security Officers, Coastguard and Border Police.

It will cover the following topics:

• Threat Analysis 
• Concepts of Operations
• Anti-piracy
• Full scale experimentations
• Sensors and Detectors
• Information Fusion
• Situation awareness
• Non-lethal response and deterrence
• Decision Support

Mine Warfare is an essential warfare capability integral to the ability of naval forces to open and maintain sea lines of communication and to dominate the littoral battlespace. Mine Warfare has emerged as a critical element of Naval Warfare capability. Modern mine-countermeasures (MCM) systems continue to be developed and procured to enhance the capabilities of dedicated forces and vigorously pursue the transition to an organic MCM capability. This session will be covering give overviews of the naval requirements and future technologies:

• Mine and MCM systems
• Detection of sea mines, especially on littoral water
• UUV applications for mine warfare
• Mine disposal systems
• Development of sea mines

The underwater battlefield is becoming increasingly complex and historically submarines operate independently with minimum use of communications. Identification, detection and localisation of friendly forces is becoming more important for military operations. This session will evaluate and detail the complexities of NCW and the look at real time communications, data submission, processing and fusion. Other areas to be considered will be:

• Multi-Static Sensor Concepts
• Data Fusion and Tracking
• Command, control and communications
• Network architectures
• Experimentation

Non-acoustic sensing technology is commonly used for the tactical, surveillance, and undersea warfare missions. Advances using non-acoustic sensor systems can be coupled with operational resources for undersea communications and networking using information architectures for real time situational awareness. This session will be covering but not limited to:

• Beamforming
• Localisation
• Tracking and data fusion
• Performance
• Non-acoustic sensors
• Computationally intelligent sensor systems
• Environmental adaptation for acoustic sensors
• Acoustic and non-acoustic sensors and sources for tactical and surveillance applications
  

A number of authorities are seeking to replace their diesel electric submarines for higher capabilities and flexibility in order to reduce life costs. This places demands on power and propulsion, platform design and signature management. In common operations, the littoral environment provides a number of challenges and this session will outline:

• Signature Management
• Rescue Systems
• Life Support Systems
• Platform design
• Energy and Propulsion

Many Navies are seeking to offset reductions in traditional platforms by deploying remote control and autonomous systems. The scene is now set for system designers to understand the military capability requirements and rise to the challenges of fielding robust technology solutions in front line forces. This session will cover:

• Autonomy versus remote control
• Lessons learned from oil, gas and mining subsea operations
• Technology Challenges in meeting new extended reach military operations
• Navigation
• Communication
• Power Sources
• Sensor Integration
• Adoption of standards