DSEI 2025: Latvia's new SUBmerge Pike unmanned submarine to improve protection of critical assets in Baltic Sea.

At DSEI 2025, the Latvian start-up SUBmerge Baltic presents its Pike autonomous underwater vehicle alongside the country’s national pavilion. After a string of incidents that damaged cables and pipelines around the Baltic Sea, NATO and EU members have poured attention into what sits on the seabed and how to watch it more closely. An affordable AUV that can map, patrol and quietly document what is happening under shipping routes or near wind farms is exactly the kind of tool regional navies and coast guards have been asking for. Pike is pitched as that tool, a compact system that can run long, carry useful payloads, and shift from survey to security tasks without a redesign.
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SUBmerge Baltic Pike AUV is a compact, modular AUV/ROV for harbor inspection and subsea infrastructure patrols, multibeam-capable with DVL/INS navigation, pier or small-boat launch, low acoustic signature, and AUV endurance measured in days (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

The Pike family is split between a remotely operated vehicle configuration and a fully autonomous variant, which allows the same architecture to serve pier teams one day and go long endurance the next. In ROV mode the platform is designed for roughly an eight hour working window with operations down to a few hundred meters, which suits close inspection and harbor work. In AUV mode the endurance stretches significantly, with targets quoted in days rather than hours and ranges that reach into the low hundreds of kilometers, always dependent on payload and sea state. The frame is deliberately modular, keeping the fairing smooth enough for low drag while leaving room for sensor swaps without sending the unit back to a factory.

Navigation and perception are where most AUVs live or die and Pike leans on a familiar but capable stack. A Doppler velocity log and an inertial navigation system carry the vehicle between waypoints underwater where GPS is no help, while panoramic sonar and optional multibeam echo sounder packages handle mapping and avoidance. SUBmerge Baltic has already publicized trials with third party multibeam systems, which is a tell that the payload bay is not a dead end but a live interface for different survey kits. It means a harbor authority or a naval hydrography team can standardize on Pike but keep their existing sensors in rotation.

Power and handling are aimed at small teams. Pike is sized for launch from a pier ladder or a small workboat, which keeps deployment friction low and costs in check. Batteries are internal and sealed, but the firm’s messaging emphasizes field turnaround rather than shipyard support. The point is not to chase deep ocean records. It is to spend meaningful time in the water column at the depths where most Baltic infrastructure lies and to return clean data that can be compared patrol after patrol.

On the pier or aboard a coastal patrol craft, the tactical uses are straightforward. In ROV mode Pike gives a commander eyes on a suspicious contact without tasking divers. It can work a wharf face, inspect a cable touchdown point, or run a short sonar sweep across a channel before a convoy pulls out. Flip to AUV tasking and the profile changes. Now it is about preplanned legs, quiet endurance, and recording. A patrol can run along a pipeline, over a wind farm export cable, around a sea buoy where anchors have dragged, then surface on a schedule to push position updates and thumbnails. Low acoustic output and a small cross section reduce the chance of being noticed by an unalert adversary, which is the point of a tripwire asset.

Technically minded readers will compare Pike to larger, higher priced AUVs entering the European market and find the differences useful. Flagship systems from major primes offer greater depth, heavier payloads, and blue water autonomy suited to anti submarine warfare search patterns. Pike’s niche is narrower and closer to shore. It is a patrol craft for the seabed, a mapper that does security by documenting the normal so anomalies stand out. In practice, a Baltic navy could run a layered scheme where big AUVs and maritime patrol aircraft paint the wide picture while a fleet of smaller vehicles like Pike keep constant watch over nodes that cannot be left to luck.

NATO launched the Baltic Sentry vigilance activity in January to harden awareness over undersea infrastructure and the EU followed with new measures to lift resilience and response across member states. Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states and Germany have all upgraded the way they coordinate maritime patrols and share data, and industry is clearly reading the brief. DSEI 2025 featured a busy row of undersea autonomy, from heavyweight military AUVs to survey craft adapted for security roles. SUBmerge Baltic sits at the pragmatic end of that line. It is a small-country answer to a regional problem, and if the price and support packages stay realistic it will find buyers beyond the Baltic shoreline.

Pike will not stop a determined saboteur by itself and it is not a substitute for escorts, boarding teams or satellite tasking. What it can do is shrink blind spots, make routine inspections cheaper, and build a record that helps investigators and insurers move fast after an incident. In a region where one severed power link ripples into energy and communications markets within hours, those are not abstract benefits. For navies, coast guards and infrastructure operators that have to stretch finite budgets across a lot of water, a small AUV that shows up, runs quietly, and brings home usable data is a decent piece of kit.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.