News

2021-02-02

Leonardo Seaspray AESA Maritime Radar Integrated on GA-ASI MQ-9B

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is working with Leonardo to integrate the Leonardo Seaspray 7500E V2 radar into the centreline radar pod of its MQ-9B SeaGuardian remotely-piloted aircraft system (RPAS).

Seaspray 7500E V2 provides surveillance using a variety of advanced modes, enhancing the platform’s ability to detect even the smaller targets.

GA-ASI’s MQ-9B is revolutionising the long-endurance RPAS market by providing all-weather capability and compliance with STANAG-4671 (NATO airworthiness standard for Unmanned Aircraft Systems). These features, along with a collision-avoidance radar, enables flexible operations in civil airspace.

SeaGuardian has a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar with Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and a High-Definition - Full-Motion Video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras.

This sensor suite, augmented by automatic track correlation and anomaly-detection algorithms, enables real-time detection and identification of surface vessels over thousands of square nautical miles.

The Seaspray 7500E V2 radar is well-suited to the SeaGuardian mission set, using Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology to detect, track and classify hundreds of maritime contacts.

The integration will also include an Open Mission Systems (OMS) approach, which enables the SeaGuardian and its sensor suite to offer operational and sustainment flexibility to end users. Several countries use Leonardo Seaspray E-scan radars and the company has utilised feedback from customers to optimise the radar’s suite of advanced modes.

These include Leonardo’s patented small target detection capability, allowing it to spot extremely difficult targets such as submarine periscopes and shipwrecked individuals at long range, even in stormy seas.

Since first seeing service in the 1970s, as a mechanically-scanned radar on-board Royal Navy Lynx aircraft, Seaspray has gone through a series of major advances to establish itself as the radar of choice for the maritime sector.

A major discriminator of Leonardo’s E-scan radars is their high reliability and fault tolerance that allows effective operation throughout a mission even if a number of individual radar modules fail.

The Seaspray greatly enhances the capabilities of the MQ-9B and builds on the already close working partnership between GA-ASI and Leonardo.

Earlier this year GA-ASI announced the completion of initial integration work of Leonardo’s SAGE electronic surveillance unit onto the SeaGuardian, equipping the aircraft with the ability to gather intelligence information on maritime and land-based radar emitters over a wide area.

Leonardo, a global high-technology company, is among the top 10 world players in Aerospace, Defence and Security and Italy’s main industrial company.

Organised into five business divisions, Leonardo has a significant industrial presence in Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland and the U.S., where it also operates through subsidiaries such as Leonardo DRS (defence electronics), and joint ventures and partnerships: ATR, MBDA, Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space and Avio.

Leonardo is exhibiting at stand 06-A03 and GA-ASI at 02-B12