SESIMBRA, Portugal — An hour from Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, on a clear sunny day in late September, a large, penguin-like robot peeks above the sea surface. It circles a Portuguese Navy ship from a distance, hardly visible to the human eye, concealed by the deep blue waters of the Atlantic ocean.

The system is the Greyshark from Germany’s EuroAtlas, an autonomous underwater vehicle measuring 6.5 meters in length and weighing as much as a delivery van. It is one of the naval drones the German Navy brought to the Portuguese coastal town of Sesimbra to partake in NATO’s Dynamic Messenger and REPMUS exercises.

These drills, which focused on testing over 200 unmanned systems, ran for three weeks in local waters.

An important portion of the training was dedicated to mine countermeasures war

See Full Page