According to a recent report on the website of Defense News, European navies are persistently seeking torpedoes that can destroy torpedoes. The report is compiled as follows: A torpedo launched by a surface vessel can track other torpedoes for missile defense style frontal interception - this technology has the potential to overturn existing rules. However, after more than a decade of research, Germany and the Netherlands, which are leading in this area, still need several years to equip their navies with hard kill anti torpedo capabilities. The German Navy has been studying a product called "Sea Spider" developed by Atlas Electronics for many years. According to the company's website, the related technical work can even be traced back to earlier, and engineers have been researching for at least 15 years. However, although Atlas tried to market "Sea Spider" as a combat readiness weapon, no navy has yet bought it. The Dutch Ministry of Defense has repeatedly postponed the launch of the official procurement plan based on the "sea spider". A few years ago, the German Navy tested the "Sea Spider" but decided not to adopt the system. The Canadian Navy was once seen as a potential customer for the "sea spider" due to its large-scale surface combat plan, but this capability was not mentioned in the initial technical lineup of the future fleet. A spokesman for ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, the parent company of Atlas Electronics, declined to discuss the "sea spider" and pointed out that the German navy had previously asked for its details to be kept confidential. A spokesperson for the German Ministry of Defense said that the confidentiality level and contract status of this technology prohibit the disclosure of details. However, the spokesperson told Defense News magazine that officials in Berlin believe that the ability to intercept torpedoes with torpedoes is, in principle, a key military protection technology. Researchers from the Dutch Applied Natural Sciences Research Center cited data from the US Coast Guard, stating that torpedoes have always been one of the main threats to surface vessels, with over half of the US Navy ships sunk during World War II being related to torpedoes. Experts say that defending torpedoes is essentially still a plan with no chance of winning. Once this weapon attacks surface vessels, the latter will be in a relatively weak position. The main defense measures of warships include maneuvering or launching decoy shells to confuse incoming torpedoes. However, the latter measure cannot defend against so-called wake guided torpedoes, which adjust their course of action and hit ships in a straight line from behind. Their sonar features are submerged in the noise of the ship's own propulsion system. In 2017, the US Navy installed and tested anti torpedo interceptors on three aircraft carriers, and in 2018, the Navy dismantled the system. The US Navy stated that although this highly lethal weapon demonstrates a certain ability to defeat incoming torpedoes, its reliability is uncertain and its lethality has not been tested. The manufacturer of "Sea Spider" promises on its website that it can intercept all types of torpedoes and calculate the collision path with incoming weapons by combining sensor data installed on aircraft carriers and intercepting torpedoes. Since last year, with the support of EU projects led by Germany and the Netherlands, the "Sea Spider" program has once again been put on the agenda to seek further development, abbreviated as the "anti torpedo torpedo". The description of the project on the EU website indicates a desire to "introduce a torpedo demonstrator that is mature in development and capable of destroying torpedoes into a design suitable for production, with qualified operating devices and a validated functional chain". A spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Defense said that the "sea spider" technology is still too immature to establish a formal project, although Dutch defense officials had planned to launch this operation from 2022. According to the Dutch Ministry of Defense, if all of this can be achieved, budget analysts have included the torpedo's ability to destroy torpedoes in the project category costing between 250 million and 1 billion euros. A spokesperson told Defense News Weekly that there is another related project led by the Dutch Applied Natural Science Research Center, estimated to cost 50 million to 100 million euros, to improve torpedo detection technology, which will enter the final "anti torpedo" system. (New Society)