Naval ISR: Thales offers a comprehensive RPAS solution
States rely increasingly on shipping for international trade, but have never faced as many varied threats to their coastal waters and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ).
The list of risks and dangers that nations have always faced now includes the trafficking of drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods, illegal immigration, piracy and shipping accidents and all that they entail — shipwrecks, environmental disasters and so on. With tensions between states also rising, particularly due to their need to monitor areas of ocean and/or coastline, these risks, far from fading, are resurgent and helping to fuel a race for naval weaponry. Alongside the tools that nation states have traditionally used to gain control over EEZ (such as light frigates, patrol and support vessels, and maritime surveillance aircraft), new solutions are being developed that will deal with these growing hazards more effectively and keep costs down. This is a new market, in which naval and aerial drones are winning the lion’s share of contracts.
Aerial drones: combining operational effectiveness with managed costs and risks
Costing less to buy than surveillance aircraft, aerial drones also have major cost of ownership benefits. They require no costly crew, consume less kerosene and are often less bulky, but they also meet a very widespread need to limit risk. Piloted remotely, they avoid risking pilots’ lives in hazardous climatic — and sometimes tactical — conditions. Having an increasingly large endurance and range, they also offer permanent maritime ISR capability and state-of-the-art detection capacity thanks to diverse and complementary sensors: radar, optronics, electromagnetic, etc.
In this field, Thales is a leading player. The European number one in the tactical drone segment, the group boasts a full suite of solutions that are ideally suited to naval challenges and will be showcased at this twenty-fifth edition of the Euronaval trade show. Offering now-conventional resources, like the RPAS(1) Watchkeeper-X, which will be on display at the show, Thales will innovate by presenting for the first time a tactical mini-drone, the Fulmar-X, with technical characteristics that augur very well for the group’s success in its domestic and export markets.
The Fulmar-X: multiplying detection capacities
Operationally, the Fulmar-X is extremely flexible, and can change control station during a mission
Small in scale, the Fulmar-X is, first and foremost, a fixed-wing UAV(2) with a wingspan of three metres and a maximum take-off weight of 20 kilograms. It can be transported in separate parts, takes only around twenty minutes to assemble, and can then be deployed on land or at sea, using an onboard catapult. The Fulmar-X is intuitive thanks to a very simple human-machine interface, and despite its small size offers attractive detection and endurance capabilities. Having a payload capacity of four kilograms, it carries an infrared video camera enabling it to operate day and night, undertaking eight-hour missions at a limited altitude and speed(3). Having a flight range of 800 kilometres, it can transmit imagery in real time up to 80 kilometres from its ground or naval station. This boosts the detection capability of a coastal patrol boat belonging to a military navy, border agency, coastguard or police force very considerably. Operationally, the Fulmar-X is extremely flexible, and can change control station during a mission. Launched from the coast, for example, it can perfectly easily be managed at sea by a vessel which will take over piloting and recovery (using a net). Suited to coastal missions such as reconnaissance of maritime traffic (thanks to its ability to carry an automatic identification system (AIS)), maritime surveillance (fisheries control, sea rescue, anti-trafficking), and image capture in the event of natural and/or environmental disasters (oil spills, etc.), the Fulmar-X is also ideally suited to navies’ requirements for offshore missions. It is the solution for all navies seeking to enhance their detection capabilities with a simple asset that strikes a good balance between cost and the performance of its onboard sensors and can, if necessary, form part of a more complex and complementary suite including various types of aerial drones, such as the Watchkeeper.
Watchkeeper-X: proven effectiveness, modular export options
Combat proven, and capable of transmitting data within a radius of 140 kilometres of its control station, the Watchkeeper X is the best-performing and most mature European drone. It has an endurance of 16 hours and a practical altitude limit of 5,000 metres, putting it out of the reach of most MANPAD-type ground-to-air systems.
In service in the British army, just one week ago it completed a successful test campaign, conducted jointly by the British army and the Royal Navy as part of the “Unmanned Warrior 2016” exercise in order to validate a number of usage concepts. Implementing its I-Master radar, the Watchkeeper has proven its ability to scan the ocean over a width of 50 kilometres and detect, day and night, any surface target, from a container ship to objects the size of a jet ski. It has also been deployed in boarding and inspection situations, to keep watch over the side of the stopped vessel that is out of an inspection vessel’s direct line of sight. In this scenario, it has detected personnel and equipment movements designed to conceal certain activities. Lastly, it has demonstrated its ability to move from a naval environment to a land environment, without transition, with the same effectiveness, and in so doing detect goods being unloaded on a beach and their recovery by a team on land, and track the vehicle transporting the merchandise.
Designed to be produced jointly with local companies in client countries, it can help boost these countries’ industrial sovereignty capabilities
This tried and tested system is now being developed by Thales in the context of a new offering specifically designed for the international market: the Watchkeeper-X, a platform based on an open architecture enabling a series of adaptations to meet an export client’s specifications. Offering a large payload capacity, allowing it to carry a range of sensors (cameras, radars, ELINT tools, etc.) operating in synergy in different modes, it boasts high ISR performance, combined with crucial action capacity. Suited to gathering and transmitting information in real time, Watchkeeper-X is able to guide weapons to a target or itself deliver different models of effectors. Designed to be produced jointly with local companies in client countries, it can help boost these countries’ industrial sovereignty capabilities in the defence and security segments. Overall, it is not only a system allowing states to substantially increase their ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition & Reconnaissance) capabilities, without necessarily committing to a major financial investment by acquiring piloted platforms off the shelf, but also a tool enabling client countries, in concert with the Fulmar-X, to really boost their offshore capacity.
In the context of the simultaneous observation of coastlines, coastal waters and a whole EEZ, Watchkeeper-X and Fulmar-X, thanks to their respective strengths, can conduct a joint operation at the scale of a vast theatre of operations, operating from land (Watchkeeper-X) and sea (Fulmar-X) in support of one or more sovereign vessels but potentially also naval drones like the future AUSS from Thales.
Thales now offers an extremely varied range of solutions to offshore defence and security players, from mine countermeasures to ASM and air defence combat capabilities, and from cyberdefence to intelligence, encompassing a full suite of naval, aerial and terrestrial systems. In a market eager for innovations blending performance, ease of use and controlled costs, the group is poised to increase its client portfolio still further.
Five hundred vessels belonging to some fifty different navies or maritime services are equipped with its systems, and at Euronaval Thales confirms its status as the European leader in this segment.
(1) Remotely Piloted Aircraft System
(2) Unmaned Aerial Vehicle
(3) Maximum altitude of 400 kilometres and cruising speed of 100 km/h
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