REPMUS 2025: NATO DIANA participants integrate technologies with Portuguese Navy frigate

An Astrolight terminal on display at Exercise ‘REPMUS 25'. (Janes/Neil Dee)

NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) participant companies have integrated their technologies with the Portuguese Navy's modernised M-class frigate D Francisco De Almeida (F 334) as part of NATO's Exercise ‘Dynamic Messenger/REPMUS 25' (Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems) held in Portugal in September. DIANA companies Astrolight, Zelim, and Kelluu confirmed to Janes during briefings on 22 and 23 September that their technology had been integrated with the frigate.

Laser communications

Lithuanian company Astrolight provided its point-to-point laser communications system, integrating six terminals each on D Francisco De Almeida and on the Portuguese Navy survey ship D Carlos I (A 522). Chief technology officer and co-founder of Astrolight Dalius Petrulionis and systems engineer at Astrolight Adomas Lukenskas said the advantages of the laser communications system are its stealth and speed.

Due to the narrowbeam used for communications, signals are difficult to intercept, as data can only be acquired within the beam. Petrulionis said during ‘REPMUS 25' Astrolight “performed numerous links, which are hard to jam, almost un-jammable, and hard to detect so we were not able actually to find a sensor in this exercise, which … could even attempt to see what we are trying to transmit at the wavelengths we are transmitting”.