K-STER C
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Ikhtisar
Expendable mine-disposal vehicle that dives to a sea mine and destroys it with a shaped charge, used by NATO navies.
K-STER C is an expendable mine-disposal vehicle from Exail, one of the standard tools of modern mine warfare. The 1.5 m, 55 kg vehicle is launched from a minehunter, an uncrewed surface vessel, or a small boat, and steered from outside the minefield. It uses a dual-frequency sonar and a day/night camera to find and confirm the mine, then fires its tiltable shaped charge at it, destroying the vehicle along with the target. It dives to 300 m, reaches about 5 knots, and works up to 1.5 km from its launch point for about an hour. A training version, K-STER CT, uses an inert warhead. Belgium and the Netherlands selected it for their new mine-countermeasure fleets, and NATO ordered EUR 60 million worth in 2024.
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Catatan
Exail specification: 1.5 m long, 0.5 m wide, 0.43 m high, 55 kg in air, 300 m depth, up to 1,500 m operational range from its launch point, up to 5 kn, about 1 hour endurance, two horizontal and two vertical thrusters, USBL tracking. In August 2024 NATO's NSPA awarded Exail a EUR 60 million contract for the Belgian and Dutch navies.
