AERIAL SURVEILLANCE FOR MARITIME SECURITY

In a dynamic and often unstable environment, surveillance operations in the maritime domain are complicated and demand a forward-thinking modus operandi. Maritime threats such as piracy, smuggling, illegal underwater activities and other criminal and terror operations are rising and require comprehensive maritime awareness to increase safety and security. iSTAR's innovative UAV solutions provide an easily deployable VTOL platform for extended mission endurance and a suite of operational flexibility to perform anywhere, at any time, even under the most challenging conditions. smaller military transport aircraft are used but they cannot carry the same load meaning more flights over a longer period of time. “There is about 400 tons of our kit that is air portable, so that requires seven or eight flights. The DSRVs weight about 25 tons, but then all the other vital elements such as the hyperbaric kit, the launch and recovery systems and the power generators are needed. We turn up and presume the ship we will deploy on has nothing, said Dellar. This comes down to the detail of having to weld the launch and recover frame to the deck of the rescue ship.

There is also a consideration in the actual geographical location where any rescue will be conducted. Rather than having one ship dedicated to supporting any rescue with the DSRV, which may be hundreds of miles from where it is needed when an incident occurs, an air portable kit would usually same time provided the large enough transport aircraft such as Boeing’s C-17 or Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules can be called upon.

“Today, typical submarine crew is between 130-140 personnel. A typical rescue lift in the DSRV would be between 15 to a maximum of 20 people at one time - fewer if there are people with serious injuries to extract.more if some are injured. Two to three hours between mate, surface and ready to go again. We need to know what the customers mission is and then we can drive it from a modular perspective.

One of the problems facing naval operators is the training time that is required, especially for a DSRV pilot. “The training programme typically takes two and a half years, but often by the time someone has been fully trained they are close to being rotated out to their next assignment. Also they must have to have a certain amount of dive time before we can train them, hence the need for us to train as many people as possible,” said Dellar. But this is reliant on the customer’s budget and is the reason behind JFD’s efforts to establish an unofficial club of operators - so that each operator may be able to call on other national operators in a time of crisis - and all crews are trained to the same standard.

JFD has a history of service with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) with a contract that ran for 15 years. The RAN’s DSRV is shortly coming up for either renewal or a major service and with the AUKUS (trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) set to deliver Australia’s first fleet of nuclear powered attack submarines, any discussion about the requirements of a DSRV need to parallel the acquisition process.

Special Operations / Diver Delivery

JFD has a number of different capability areas other than the submarine rescue services, the other three being special operations; ‘black’ boats; and commercial systems. Alistair Wilson strategy, sales and marketing director at JFD explains that there is a growing desire to see a cross-over between ‘dry’ rescue vehicles which are not designed to be covert, and ‘wet’ diver delivery vehicles - the black boats. “We