Sonardyne's systems provide centimetric positional accuracies over long ranges and can be readily configured for virtually any operating environment around the world, according to Rob Phillips, Group Managing Director of Ashtead Technology.

The Scottish company's outlay on new equipment to date represents a sizeable investment following its order earlier this year for four Marinus attitude and heading reference systems and other equipment from TSS International under a contract worth £1.1m.

Meanwhile, Sonardyne has also secured a second order from the UK Ministry of Defence for its Scout underwater tracking system which calculates positions of beacon-fitted subsea targets by measuring their ranges and bearings from a vessel mounted transceiver using ultra-short baseline (USBL) methods. As with the first system delivered earlier this year, it will be used for tracking ROVs and divers during surveys of wrecks and aircraft sites as part of the MoD's salvage equipment inventory deployed by specialist recovery units at Plymouth and Greenock in Scotland.