In France, seven leading technology companies, with Indra at the forefront alongside SAES, UTEK, Aragon Photonics, Iqua Robotics, FYLA and Sateliot, joined forces in Paris on Wednesday to address one of the greatest vulnerabilities in international security: shielding the seabed.
During the Euronaval trade fair, senior industry executives signed a strategic agreement to develop the SIPRIS initiative, a project intended to give Spain technological sovereignty in the protection and continuous surveillance of cables and critical infrastructure under water.
Indra will lead coordination of the ecosystem and will take on overall system integration through its Seadef architecture and the sovereign artificial intelligence platform IndraMind, reinforced by the use of unmanned aerial drones.
For Ana Belén Buendía, the company’s naval director, Sipris responds to the “urgent need” to monitor the underwater environment in order to give Europe technological sovereignty. She stressed that the alliance between leading Spanish firms will make it possible to build a comprehensive solution and position the national industry at the forefront of a sector that is undergoing a strategic boom.
Drones, fibre and satellites to shield the seabed
The other partners will deploy a multidisciplinary technological network to secure the marine environment. SAES will contribute its sensors and sonar processing for threat detection, while autonomous control will be shared between UTEK, responsible for surface vehicles (USV), and Iqua Robotics, focused on unmanned submarines (UUV) for infrastructure inspection.
Anomaly detection via fibre optics will be handled by Aragon Photonics, supported by FYLA’s underwater optical communications and Sateliot’s satellite coverage.
This alliance lays the foundation for a modular, scalable industrial ecosystem, designed to progressively integrate new players, technology centres and SMEs from the sector.
The project will now move straight into field testing before its launch on the market. With this step, Spain scores a major coup in the defence industry and joins the small club of powers capable of protecting their own infrastructure beneath the sea.