The Japan Times - How to Clear the Strait of Hormuz from the Air: UMag Solutions Launches F1Mag(R) - an Unmanned Solution for Rapid Naval Mine Detection and Anti-Submarine Warfare

Why this matters now

As Iranian sea mines remain unaccounted for in the Strait of Hormuz, NATO's Baltic Sentry mission scales up patrols of subsea infrastructure, and Black Sea drift mines continue to threaten civilian shipping, UMag Solutions today launches F1Mag®, an airborne magnetic sensing system that lets defence operators detect naval mines, submarines and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) from the air - at speeds of up to 120 km/h, without deploying anything into the water.

After more than a year of testing with both naval and army units, F1Mag® is now officially launched. F1Mag® can be mounted on any drone and flown over the area of interest. It detects the magnetic threats below the sea surface such as moored and bottom mines, submarines, UUVs, and other metal objects, and delivers the data in real time. The sensitivity of F1Mag® allows operators to scan for naval mines down to 15-30m below the sea surface and submarines at depths of 500+ metres.

"We designed F1Mag® for the subsea threats that define modern warfare. The need to detect those threats at high speed, with accurate real-time data and without putting people or equipment in the water, or having marine vessel nearby, has never been greater. UMag Solutions has already used F1Mag® to track submarines and UUVs and to find naval mines in open sea."

"Because it operates from the air, F1Mag® is far less dependent on weather, sea state or vessel support. It is unaffected by sea ice, muddy waters or boundary layers in the water column" says Arne Døssing Andreasen, CEO and Co-Founder of UMag Solutions.

Naval mines and quiet submarines have re-emerged as some of the most cost-effective and politically disruptive weapons in modern conflict. A single mine or even the credible suspicion of one is enough to spike insurance premiums, reroute global trade and force navies into weeks of painstaking clearance operations.

The threat landscape, region by region:

• Strait of Hormuz: roughly 20% of global seaborne oil and a quarter of LNG trade transits this chokepoint. Iranian mine-laying activity since early 2026 has produced an active clearance campaign and reports that even the mine-layers have lost track of what was deployed. Proving the absence of a mine is now harder than finding one.

• Baltic Sea: a string of cable, pipeline and power-link incidents since 2022 has put NATO's Baltic Sentry mission on permanent watch. Shallow waters, heavy traffic and deniable "shadow fleet" vessels make rapid, wide-area subsea screening essential.

• Black Sea: drifting mines from the Russia-Ukraine war continue to wash through the basin and into the approaches of the Bosphorus.

• South China Sea & Indo-Pacific: hardening submarine activity, contested island chains and dense undersea cable infrastructure raise the cost of any future mining campaign.

• Mediterranean & wider littorals: legacy UXO deployment continues demand for fast, scalable mine and anomaly detection.

Conventional mine countermeasures (MCM) rely on surface ships, divers and tethered or UUVs - slow, exposed, weather-dependent and limited by sea state, ice and turbid water. F1Mag® flips that model: the sensor is in the air, the operator is on shore or aboard the host vessel, and the survey speed is measured in hectares per hour, not square metres.

What F1Mag® does

• Naval mine detection (MCM): 30-70 hectares per hour, with the sensitivity to map mines 15-30 m below the sea surface.

• Anti-submarine warfare (ASW): up to 1,000-6,000 hectares per hour and several hundreds meters of depth, suitable for wide-area screening of chokepoints, bastions and approach lanes.

• All-Environment Detection: unaffected by sea ice, sea state, muddy water or thermal/halocline boundary layers.

• Land applications: vehicles and fortress structures can be detected in dense forests

• Real-time data delivered to the operator in flight; no recovery, no post-processing delay and direct integration with existing NATO STANAG 4817.

Drone-agnostic by design

F1Mag® integrates with highend drone platforms in current defence and dual-use service worldwide, including UMS Skeldar (V-200), High-Eye (Airboxer), Pterodynamics (Transwing), Acecore Technologies (NOA), Airolit (CX-10), Hecto Drone (HD-606), Freespace Operations (Callisto 25), Inspired Flight (IF1200), Velos Rotors (V3) and Harris Aerial (Carrier H6).

"By making F1Mag® drone-agnostic, we let defence customers use the platforms they already trust, and we shorten the path from procurement to operational capability," Døssing Andreasen adds.

Built on battle-proven technology

F1Mag® extends the technology behind UMag's ultra-sensitive V2Mag® system, already deployed by defence forces in several European countries for land and coastal mine mapping. Since summer 2025, F1Mag® has been tested and validated for open-sea naval mine detection, anti-submarine warfare operations and the detection of vehicles concealed in forested terrain.

Availability

F1Mag® is available now for operational deployment, demonstrations and partner integrations. UMag Solutions will be exhibiting at XPONENTIAL 2026 in Detroit (Stand 14020) and NATO Naval Mine Warfare Conference 2026 in Ostend, Belgium, featuring both V2Mag® and F1Mag®.

About UMag Solutions ApS:

UMag Solutions is a Danish defence company pioneering drone-based quantum magnetic sensing for subsurface threat detection. Since 2018, UMag has been at the forefront of ultra-sensitive, real-time magnetic detection technologies - supporting land and naval mine detection, anti-submarine warfare and subsea infrastructure surveillance. With battle-proven, user-friendly aerial systems, UMag is redefining how subsurface threats are detected and managed across both land and maritime domains.

Contact information:

Frederik Skoumann
[email protected]
+45 28830336

Pete Marshall
[email protected]

Links:

More about UMag Solutions

SOURCE: UMag Solutions ApS

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

M.Saito--JT