A domestic import-substituting portable multipurpose scientific echo sounder (MIEL) with a split beam was developed by Vector Marine Electronics Ltd, Russian Federation. The need to create a domestic echo sounder for carrying out resource surveys in shallow inland waters is due to the fact that foreign scientific echo sounders have narrow beam patterns, which does not allow them to be used at depths less than 3 meters due to small sounding volumes of water medium and hence the low representativeness of the data. In addition, the cost of such devices is not available to the vast majority of Russian scientific organizations. After the introduction of sanctions by Western countries, many foreign manufacturers have stopped selling high-tech products to our country, and those that can be supplied are practically deprived of technical support, since many representative offices in Russia were closed, and the development of any high-tech products implies close cooperation between the developer and the user. By purchasing foreign equipment, our users are deprived of contact with Western manufacturers and the possibility of upgrading and improving the acquired equipment.

In June 2018, the specialists of KBME LLC “Vector” and FGBNU VNIRO conducted the design of the import-replacing portable multi-purpose single-beam split beam echo sounder, the MIEL cipher conducted a comparative hydroacoustic survey at the Vaziro reservoir (measuring ground VNIRO) developed experience sample small-scale scientific echo sounder (MIEL) with a scientific echo sounder EY-500 of the Norwegian firm Simrad.

As part of the implementation of the ROC under the state program of the Russian Federation “Development of shipbuilding and equipment for the development of offshore fields for 2013–2030” on the theme “Design and manufacture of import-replacing portable multi-purpose single-beam research echo sounder with a split beam”, the code MIEL, KBME LLC “Vector "Developed the software of this echo sounder and received a corresponding certificate of state registration of the computer program No. 2018618985 dated July 25, 2018