Babcock develops innovative anti-torpedo system

A revolutionary launcher powered by compressed air could boost submarines’ ability to evade torpedo attacks.

Every submarine film has that moment. The moment when a torpedo is launched towards the submarine. There’s the tension. The panicked looks. The pings of the sonar. The focused concentration. And someone, always, ends up shouting ’Dive! Dive! Dive!’ as the submarine takes evasive action.

While evasive manoeuvres are important for avoiding torpedo attack, for the past decade or so, the marine defence sector has been developing anti-submarine countermeasures. These are devices that can be launched from the submarine to trick the torpedo’s tracking system into following them, rather than the target.

Read more