Tag Archives: UAS

A Truely Low Cost Maritime Surveillance Aircraft

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Spanish IT contractor Indra, SELEX Galileo, FLIR Systems and Airborne Technologies are equipping an Italian built, light twin aircraft to perform maritime surveillance.

 

“Regarding the sensors, the aircraft will be equipped with SELEX Galileo’s Seaspray 5000E radar whose detail degree allows distinction of the shapes and sizes of objects and is capable of detecting vessels or small objects in the sea. It will also carry a state-of-the-art  electroptical camera of large format and high definition of FLIR Systems. We should also add a vessel id system which captures the automatic signals of ships. This identification signal emitted by ships is compared with that supplied by the aircraft sensors, thus facilitating surveillance and detection of suspicious actions.”

In its civilian form, the Tecnam P2006 is the lightest certified twin engine aircraft sold in the US. It has two 98 HP engines that can run on either AvGas or premium auto-gas. The four seat is about the size and price of a Cessna 172. Fuel burn is less than 10 gal. per hour.

An ability to search up to 40,000 sq miles (e.g. 200×200) on a single sortie is claimed.

This might be thought of as an alternative to UAVs.

Fleet Mix–Where are the Trade-Offs?

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A recent GAO report offers some insight into how the AC&I budget will work for the next few years. The report is accessible here: Coast Guard: Observations on Acquisition Management and Efforts to Reassess the Deepwater Program
GAO-11-535T, Apr 13, 2011
Quick View Quick view toggle Summary (HTML)   Highlights Page (PDF)   Full Report (PDF, 18 pages)   Accessible Text

The thrust of the report seems to be that while the coast Guard has made some progress in managing its own programs since terminating Deepwater there are still a lot of problems and many of them stem from being unrealistic about budget expectations. There also seems to be an underlying frustration because the Coast Guard is not offering real alternatives to the fleet mix proposed by the discredited “Deepwater” program.

“We reported in 2009 that the administration’s budget projections indicated that the DHS annual budget was expected to remain constant or decrease over the next decade. When the Coast Guard submitted its fiscal year 2012 budget request, it also released its fiscal years 2012-2016 acquisition capital investment plan. In reviewing this plan, we found that the Coast Guard’s projected funding levels for fiscal years 2013 through 2016 are significantly higher than budgets previously appropriated or requested and therefore may be unrealistic. This unrealistic acquisition budget planning exacerbates the challenges Coast Guard acquisition programs face. As seen in figure 2, the average annual budget plan from fiscal year 2012-through fiscal year 2016 is about $520 million, or approximately 37 percent, higher than the average Coast Guard acquisition budgets previously appropriated or requested during the past 6 years.”

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UAVs, Let’s Try This One

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Here is a UAV that is already in use by the Navy. The ScanEagle, is so small it could operate routinely from the Webber Class WPCs.

Wing Span 10.25 ft (3.12m)
Length 6.5 ft (1.98m)
Max Take Off Weight 44-48.5 lb. (22 kg)
Max speed 80 knots
Cruise speed 50 knots
Ceiling 10,000 ft
Max endurance: 15 hours

In it’s “dual bay” configuration the sensor package can include a synthetic aperture imaging radar in addition to video. It can use standard diesel fuel, but it won’t use much since the engine is less than two horsepower.

It was reportedly used during the Maersk Alabama piracy incident in April 2009 (the first of three times pirates attempted to take the ship).

I think its worth a closer look, like perhaps a deployment on a 210.

https://i0.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/ScanEagleIraq.jpg

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Optionally Manned RHIB?

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We know the Coast Guard is working on UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems). Perhaps they should also be looking at optionally manned surface vessels. I’m thinking in terms boats that can continue to fill the role of the RHIBs we already have, but with the additional capability of being programmed to conduct a (semi) autonomous search that complements the mother-ship’s own search to almost double the mother-ship’s effective search capability. It looks like the technology, including obstacle avoidance,  may already be out there.

Of course we can do a complementary search with a ship’s boat now, but the endurance of the crew limits this option. We can’t routinely expect a boat crew to operate effectively in a search mode for long periods, but a RHIB could operate for eight or more hours even in weather conditions that would be problematic for a boat crew. With the sensors linked to the mother-ship where sensor operators can be rotated, the search should be almost as effective as a second cutter.

The new 154 foot Hero Class Cutters (FRC) will not operate a helicopter, but a optionally manned RHIB could allow them to effectively patrol an area almost twice as large as they could search unassisted.

A large cutter might use it to complement helicopter or UAV search patterns, filling in when air resources are not available. It could also search in the shallows, close inshore, where we could not take a ship.

Because it is relatively difficult to detect, an optionally manned RHIB, scouting 20-30 miles ahead of the cutter, might detect smugglers that attempt to avoid the cutter by using their own scouting vessels.

The Coast Guard did look at the “Protector,” a small unmanned surface vessel, in 2006, but that looks like a very different concept of operation.

The Singapore Navy already seems to have adopted this technology. Units of various capability are already being offered by Italian, German, and Israeli vendors, some with partners in the US.