The Royal Navy has awarded a 12 month contract extension to Airbus covering the continued provision of satellite-based maritime surveillance services for the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC).
The firm say here that the contract follows the successful completion of a proof of concept phase, and will ensure the continued monitoring of areas of interest in UK waters and ultimately protect UK sovereign borders from suspicious vessel activity.
“Using optical and radar imaging as well as AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, Airbus will provide reports about vessels within the UK Exclusive Economic Zone, as well as information that will help in the prevention of potential illegal activities. JMSC, which is the UK government’s centre of excellence for maritime security, required a series of services that would provide intelligence to augment their own surveillance activities. Under the agreement, JMSC will benefit from a large range of Airbus’ surveillance and analytics capabilities.
The contract includes, Vessel Detection Reports using SAR data analysis, either delivered in emergency mode for urgently required satellite tasking to monitor suspicious vessels of interest across the globe, or on a twice daily basis for general vessel identification as well as the classification of ‘dark’ vessels in key areas of interest.
In addition, the Defence Site Monitoring service, using automated algorithms applied to optical imagery, for the detection, recognition and identification of vessels will detail the evolution of port activity and raise alerts whenever abnormal activity occurs.”
Airbus say their surveillance services will give JMSC a greater understanding of the various activities across UK waters, especially with a focus on potentially uncooperative vessels, helping to better address security challenges and allowing resources to be rapidly deployed to intercept.
Fishery protection ? Just hope we have the ships and ‘spherical objects’ to board and arrest any one breaking the law.
Is that RFA Diligence on FL Jetty? Wonder if it could be re-activated, no idea what we have east of suez to support subs now.
Yes, it is indeed RFA Diligence.
I remember seeing the Intrepid sitting around that location (mothballed apparently) it looked a right mess!
It was pretty scabby when I was last on it about 15 years ago. Maybe time for a ‘Son of, the return of Dilipig 2’.
Yes agree with you there!
Outside of Duqm, not a great deal. It’s a rather large glaring capability gap.
Yes it seems to be, I take it if an SSN has need for dockyard repairs east of suez then it’s off to Duqm, as Andy mentioned there should be a replacement, you would think it makes sense to have a floating maintenance facility deployed that way.
I tend to agree with you on that, especially as we seem to be dead keen on pushing our SSNs out there.
It’s long distances between pit stops out there, far greater then our neck of the woods, so it would seem logical to have some form of specialised support that can move about.