DEFENCE
The MQ-9B SeaGuardian redefines the future of maritime and naval security We don’t think about the risks that pilots and crew take every day to protect our shores and keep us safe, until we learn about an innovation that allows continuous surveillance with real time data relay while they work safely from the shore. The world isn’t getting any simpler, so governments everywhere are reaching for tools that can help leaders first understand and then decide how to act. Few systems better symbolise the application of technology in response to these needs than remotely piloted aircraft, which have revolutionised governance everywhere – including military, security, environmental operations and more. The U.S. aerospace and defense vendor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., has led this charge for decades and never stopped innovating. U.S. and other governmental and international clients always are in mind but frequently the company takes its own initiative and works with its own internal funding. This helped yield one of its most recent breakthroughs, a game-changing new capability for fixed wing remotely piloted aircraft that alters maritime security and naval operations everywhere – with huge implications for the work of nations in the Western Pacific: Anti-Submarine Warfare. The new MQ-9B SeaGuardian patrol aircraft is the only one of its kind that can search for and track submerged targets. It’s an ideal application for a remotely operated system but one that hasn’t been possible until now thanks to the latest equipment and software from GA-ASI and its partners. To understand the implications of the SeaGuardian’s new sub-hunting capabilities, it’s helpful to start from the beginning: What makes it and other aircraft like it revolutionary are their abilities to stay aloft far longer than human-crewed aircraft, searching or tracking, or taking other tasks essentially non-stop. These aircraft operate overhead for 20 hours, 30 hours, or more at a time, depending on their configuration – relieving each other when working in teams to provide continuous surveillance and other effects. Their human pilots and other crew members work from safely distant ground stations, sometimes thousands of miles away. That removes them from any danger of hostile action and it also makes their workload much more manageable than the crews of a traditional aircraft. An aircraft that operates this way, processing sensor data in real time, can thus accomplish things that older models never could. In the case of the SeaGuardian, that includes sweeping huge swathes of ocean with its sensors or, if necessary, descending to drop sonobuoys to search for submerged targets. 26
An MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft integrates with the U.S. Navy littoral combat ship USS Coronado during sophisticated military exercises off the West Coast of the United States. The aircraft’s maritime and submarine-hunting capabilities are the first of their kind in an aircraft of its class. // Photo courtesy MCC Shannon Renfroe, USN
Every MQ-9B has a powerful electro-optical infrared camera that sends back full-motion video in day or night, enabling operations commanders to read the name off a ship of interest, for example, or watch for themselves as events unfold amongst a group of vessels. The aircraft also has a sophisticated Lynx multi-mode radar, which can see through smoke, clouds, haze and provide long-range synthetic aperture radar maps and more. The SeaGuardian operates with a dedicated multi-mode maritime radar, giving it pervasive coverage over large swathes of ocean or littoral areas, and has an Automatic Identification System sensor that collects the signals often broadcast by oceangoing vessels. One useful application for the patrol aircraft is to interrogate ships that have been detected but which aren’t displaying AIS information – or which government officials suspect may be falsifying their AIS signals. The SeaGuardian can look for itself if necessary and provide rich detail about a ship. The multi-mode radar also provides the capability for stand-off imaging of vessels and land masses. Line of Defence
