A torpedo-hunting torpedo? Meet the ‘SeaSpider.’

This is Riley Cedar with Military Times. We're over here talking to Mark Rios with TKMS Atlas

North America. Thanks for your time, Mark. Thank you for joining us. I just wanted to

speak to you a little bit about this system right here, the Sea Spider, and I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about it. Well, our company, TKMS Atlas, we do a lot of work in the undersea

warfare area. Our company is based in Germany. We've been working on an anti-torpedo torpedo

called the Sea Spider. We've been developing this for about 10 years now and already we

have three NATO Navy customers. The Sea Spider is an anti-torpedo torpedo. It's launched

from the ship, gets in the water, it has a rocket propelled motor so the Sea Spider travels

very fast. It has its own sonar in the head of the vehicle in order to find the incoming

torpedo and then intercepts to explode the torpedo, rendering the ship safe

This is a big change in surface ship defense. Normally ships rely on countermeasures and speed to get away from enemy torpedoes, but

this could very well be one of the first real applications of hard kill against enemy torpedoes

We want to get the torpedo, our torpedo, away from the ship as quickly as possible and intercept

the enemy torpedo as far away from the ship So a rocket propelled engine gives us that Deck launch is one capability We have a design where there will be four launch four weapons on one launcher and there would be one

launcher on either side of the ship. So it could be operated from the deck or there could be some

other ways that through compressed air it could be launched over the side of the ship. It's a solid

propellant and it burns from the front. We kept it simple so that we could get, it would

be easy to handle, in other words not liquid propellant, so that way it has a long shelf

life on the ship before it needs to be maintained again. The system is designed and built predominantly

in Germany right now. The rocket motor is being designed and tested in Canada and already

three NATO navies have signed up in order to buy it. The German Navy, the Netherlands Navy, and the Canadian Navy

Is there any interest from the U.S. Navy, and what do you intend to provide them

So we've had several meetings with not only U.S. defense companies, large companies

but also surface Navy leadership about this capability, and they do seem interested

They want to hear more. And what's next on the horizon? What else do you guys have coming up

Well, we're trying to get the U.S. Navy and other allies excited about this program

We think that it being able to deliver and outfit the fleet in only three years from now

we're giving a really good capability to what we perceive is a gap in our Navy ship defense