Waterside Security Demonstrated During HPT08

The waterside trials were designed to test the equipment in a range of realistic scenarios including Harbor inspection, inspection of a mooring and swimmer detection.

A number of companies were selected to participate in these trials in order to demonstrate their systems capabilities and RESON participated in cooperation with UK based company BAE Systems and Italian companies WASS, SELEX and Calzoni.

BAE Systems participated with the Talisman Automated Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which was designed to meet a range of operational requirements dependent on customer requirements, these include conventional military mine hunting as well security operations such as harbor protection. The Talisman can be operated fully autonomously on pre-programmed missions but also has the capability for the operator to intervene throughout the mission should the operational situation change. The operator communicates with the vehicle and systems via RF or Iridium SatCom (while the vehicle is surfaced) and via acoustic communications systems (when vehicle is underwater).

For the trials the Talisman was fitted with a nose mounted RESON SeaBat 7123 with a dedicated software interface specifically developed to exchange target information and receive control commands. It is believed that this was the first time that a Forward Looking MCM sonar has been fitted to an AUV.

During the exercises the Talisman was tasked to perform a harbor inspection, berth inspection and the search of an area immediately outside the harbor using SeaBat. Various Mine Like Object's (MLO’s) were deployed in and outside harbor and the mission was to find and identify these objects.

Operating at 240kHz the Seabat 7123 was able to collect good quality imagery and provide a detailed survey of the harbor bottom. However, the cluttered nature of the harbor bottom made it difficult to distinguish the MLO’s immediately. This issue would be addressed by building a detailed database of the harbor bottom, then using that data on subsequent re-inspections to identify new and potential threat objects.

In two other scenarios a pier mounted and ship mounted SeaBat 7112 was used for diver detection. For these exercises RESON sonars and a tactical display were integrated into the Selex command and control system and despite a very busy environment with many fish shoals and slow moving vessels the SeaBat was able to make to two clear diver detections. The divers in both cases were using a strategy of moving from pier to pier and waiting but the Seabat was able to re-acquire the diver on each occasion.