UK maritime USV manufacturer ZeroUSV has achieved a series of world-firsts during the opening week of NATO’s REPMUS Dynamic Messenger 2025, taking place off the coast of Portugal.
The Plymouth designed Oceanus12 uncrewed surface vessel (USV), competitively selected by the Royal Navy for this year’s exercise, has become the first USV to autonomously launch and recover a thin-lined towed acoustic array without human involvement. Until now, arrays were typically pre-deployed and clipped on or required manual crew handling during launch and recovery.
Oceanus12 has also been deploying on a daily basis 4/day of the G-sized sonobuoys using ZeroUSV’s prototype SOIL (SOnor Integrated Launch) system, with the running total now into the teens, this marks a key milestone in autonomous underwater sensor delivery. Over the course of the week, the vessel has also logged more than 40 operational hours at sea with 100% uptime, reinforcing its reliability in live multi-nation exercises and ability to deliver results at a fraction of the cost of crewed vessels.
REPMUS (Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Uncrewed Systems) is NATO’s largest annual exercise for uncrewed naval systems, hosted by the Portuguese Navy off the Tróia Peninsula and Setúbal Bay. The exercise brings together more than 20 allied nations, global defence primes and leading innovators to test how uncrewed and crewed fleets can operate together in live missions. Integrated with NATO’s Dynamic Messenger exercise, REPMUS provides a proving ground where emerging technologies are trialled at scale in complex real-world scenarios.
Matthew Ratsey, founder and managing director at ZeroUSV, said: “Achieving the first fully autonomous launch and recovery of a towed array is a landmark moment, not just for ZeroUSV but for naval operations worldwide. Demonstrating that this can be done entirely uncrewed, safely and reliably, shows how far the technology has come. When combined with extended endurance, reduced fuel costs and seamless sensor deployment, Oceanus12 is proving what uncrewed systems can deliver now, today in real-world NATO missions.”
Upgraded ahead of REPMUS25 with advanced sonar, radar and communications payloads, Oceanus12 is leading the charge, demonstrating extended-duration, over-the-horizon autonomous operations as part of NATO’s live experimentation programme.
Zero’s vessels will remain in Portugal throughout September for further integration, live exercises and the closing showcase. The 12-metre vessel’s autonomy software stack has been developed by autonomy software engineers, Marine AI.
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