“Enhancing Surveillance: Leonardo’s Advanced Maritime Radar Set to Empower GA-ASI’s MQ-9B SeaGuardian”
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is collaborating with Leonardo to incorporate the Leonardo Seaspray 7500E V2 radar into the central radar pod of its MQ-9B SeaGuardian remotely-operated aircraft system (RPAS). This addition of a market-leading radar to the SeaGuardian will facilitate ongoing maritime ISR and is accessible to our global clientele.
GA-ASI’s MQ-9B is transforming the long-endurance RPAS sector by delivering all-weather functionality and conformity with STANAG-4671 (the NATO airworthiness standard for Unmanned Aircraft Systems). These attributes, combined with a proven collision-avoidance radar, allow versatile operations within civil airspace. SeaGuardian boasts a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar featuring Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging capabilities, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and a High-Definition – Full-Motion Video sensor outfitted with optical and infrared cameras. This sophisticated sensor array, complemented by automatic track correlation and anomaly-detection algorithms, facilitates real-time identification and detection of surface vessels across thousands of square nautical miles.
The Seaspray 7500E V2 radar is ideally matched to the SeaGuardian mission profile, utilizing Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology to identify, monitor, and categorize hundreds of maritime contacts. The integration will also encompass an Open Mission Systems (OMS) methodology, which empowers the SeaGuardian and its sensor assemblage to provide operational and logistical adaptability to end users.
A multitude of nations utilize Leonardo Seaspray E-scan radars, and the enterprise has harnessed operational insights from these clients to broaden and enhance the radar’s extensive modes. These include Leonardo’s patented small target identification capability, enabling it to detect exceptionally challenging targets such as submarine periscopes and shipwrecked individuals at considerable distances, even amid turbulent seas. A significant advantage of Leonardo’s E-scan radars is their remarkable reliability and fault tolerance, ensuring effective operations throughout a mission despite potential failures of several individual radar modules.
The Seaspray significantly augments the functionalities of the MQ-9B and reinforces the existing close collaboration between GA-ASI and Leonardo. Earlier this year, GA-ASI proclaimed the successful completion of preliminary integration work for Leonardo’s SAGE electronic surveillance unit onto the SeaGuardian, equipping the aircraft with the capability to collect intelligence data on maritime and land-based radar emitters across expansive territories.
Clients will have the option to select from a diverse range of sensors and payloads on the SeaGuardian platform, with both Seaspray and SAGE available as off-the-shelf sensor choices.
