Norway's Eelume S replaces traditional mine hunting vessels with fully autonomous underwater drone.

At Enforce Tac 2026, Norway's Eelume presented the Eelume S autonomous underwater vehicle for mine countermeasure missions in coastal and confined seabed environments, which performs detection, classification, and identification within a single platform.

At Enforce Tac 2026, the Norwegian company Eelume presented its Eelume S autonomous underwater vehicle configured for mine countermeasure missions in coastal and confined seabed environments. The articulated AUV integrates sonar and optical sensors to perform detection, classification, and identification within a single platform. With a range up to 64 km, the Eelume S targets operations in shallow waters, harbors, slopes, and high-relief terrain where conventional AUVs and minehunting vessels face maneuverability constraints.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

The Eeelume S keeps personnel and crewed vessels out of minefields by reducing reliance on crewed minesweeping and by limiting the need for separate remotely operated vehicle operations during identification. (Picture source: Army Recognition)

During Enforce Tac 2026, Eelume presented its Eelume S articulated autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), focusing on its application to mine countermeasure missions in complex coastal and confined seabed environments. The Eelume S forms part of the Eelume S-series of small to medium-class all-terrain AUVs engineered to operate in proximity to challenging underwater topographies rather than maintaining higher standoff distances. The company highlighted the underwater drone’s role in detecting, classifying, and identifying underwater objects within a single autonomous unit, targeting scenarios where mines may be placed among rocks, slopes, narrow channels, harbors, and other high-relief seabed areas where conventional AUVs and minehunting vessels often face constraints. 

Eelume was founded in 2015 as a spin-off from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, following more than a decade of research in snake robotics, and has its headquarters in Trondheim. The company first entered the market with its M-series modular autonomous underwater vehicles, built around motorized articulation modules and a long, slender hydrodynamic body capable of traveling to the site using thruster pairs. Either end of the M-series vehicles could incorporate cameras, sensors, or grab tools, enabling optimized positioning and orientation of payloads during inspection and intervention tasks. The M-series can traverse large distances, access confined spaces inaccessible to conventional underwater vehicles and minehunting vessels, as autonomous subsea residency leads to potential cost reductions in subsea operations of up to 90%. 

The Eelume S incorporates a bio-inspired propulsion system based on an articulated tail joint with dual counter-rotating thrusters and a 360° roll actuation system, enabling independent control of pitch, yaw, and roll. The S-series offers 0–360° freedom in roll and pitch, vertical dive and ascend mode, agile surface control, adaptive contour following as an option or standard depending on configuration, low-speed inspection capability, and hydrobatic maneuvering. This configuration allows stable operation close to the seabed, fluid movement around obstacles, and sustained proximity to complex bathymetry such as hill-sides, underwater structures, under-ice areas, vessels, and harbors.

The objective is to combine wide-area survey endurance with close-range inspection in one vehicle, reducing blind spots that occur when systems optimized for endurance cannot maintain geometry in shallow or high-relief terrain. The Eelume S-series integrates detection, classification, and identification functions to limit reliance on separate remotely operated vehicle deployments during mine countermeasure missions. Sensor integration for the Eelume S includes the Wavefront Systems Solstice multi-aperture sonar and the Voyis Observer imaging system, through a cooperation with Forcys.

The Solstice sonar provides a 200 m swath, 0.15° beam width, and resolution down to 3.75 cm across and 2.5 cm along, delivering image quality close to synthetic aperture sonar with one-tenth of the data burden and lower power demand, while maintaining tolerance to vehicle motion in shallow-water and high-relief environments. The Voyis Observer system incorporates a 4K still camera with true-colour imaging and strobe light panels rated at 240.000 lumens in CS variants and 480.000 lumens in CXS variants, supporting high-resolution visual identification of detected objects.

The integrated suite enables transition from wide-area sonar sweeps to close-range optical inspection without changing vehicles, supporting Detection, Classification, and Identification (DCI) within a single autonomous unit. Trials in Norway’s coastal terrain demonstrated consistent area coverage and actionable high-resolution data with reduced bandwidth compared to synthetic aperture sonar missions. The S-series includes multiple depth-rated configurations with speeds of 0–5 knots and endurance and range varying by model.

For instance, the Eelume 300 S measures 200 cm in length, 20 cm in width, 20 cm in height excluding antenna, weighs 45 kg in air, has a depth rating of 300 m, and provides 11 h endurance with 64 km range. The Eelume 300 CS maintains the same dimensions with 50 kg weight, 300 m depth rating, and 10 h endurance with 52 km range, adding close-proximity imaging with 2x strobe panels at 240.000 lumens. For its part, the 300 CXS increases width to 30 cm, weight to 60 kg, retains 300 m depth rating and 0–5 knots speed, and offers 8 h endurance with 43 km range with 4x 480.000 lumen strobes and adaptive contour following as standard.

The 600 m class includes the Eelume 600 S at 250 cm length, 20 cm width, 20 cm height excluding antenna, 45–60 kg weight, 600 m depth rating, and 11 h endurance with 64 km range with extended battery options available, while the 600 CS and 600 CXS provide 10 h or 8 h endurance with 52 km or 43 km range respectively and weight ranges of 50–65 kg and 60–75 kg. Navigation for the S-series integrates an Exail Phins C3 inertial navigation system with a fiber optic gyrocompass, aided by a Doppler Velocity Log and acoustic positioning system, with GPS available at the surface.

Communication links include acoustic communication under the sea as well as WiFi, LORA radio, and Iridium satellite communication at the surface, enabling coordination during fully or semi-autonomous mission planning and in-mission data processing. The Eelume S-series AUVs are 2-person portable, with weights from 45 to 65 kg in the 300 m class, allowing deployment and retrieval from shore or small inflatable RHIBs, and compatibility with unmanned surface vessels for remote multi-vehicle operations. Typical applications extend beyond mine countermeasures to intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, inspection of underwater energy and communication infrastructure, bathymetric mapping of intricate terrain, photogrammetry, photomosaic generation, under-ice research, and stop-and-inspect functions in environments previously accessible primarily via tethered remotely operated vehicles.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.