Surveillance Australia

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Surveillance Australia Pty Ltd is an Australian aviation company. It is a subsidiary of Cobham Aviation Services Australia (formerly National Jet Systems) Special Missions' arm. It is primarily engaged in servicing the Australian Customs Service Coastwatch (now the Australian Border Force) contract, flying surveillance patrols within the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (AEEZ). It also formerly supported operations of a single airborne laser depth sounder (LADS) aircraft for the Royal Australian Navy, this was provided as a service via the aircraft owner, Fugro.

Operations[]

Surveillance Australia, Australian Border Force Dash 8 (2005).

The aircraft fly over 20,000 hours a year of surveillance flying in the AEEZ, searching for illegal fishing vessels, human traffickers, drug importation, immigration and quarantine breaches, and also regularly assist in search and rescue operations.

Surveillance Australia has played major roles in several border protection operations, directly contributing to over 200 foreign fishing vessels being apprehended and destroyed for illegally fishing for shark fin, reef fish and dolphins in Australian waters each year.[1]

In 2005, Surveillance Australia was awarded the A$1 billon Coastwatch contract that will see its aircraft operating through to 2020.[2] This contract saw operations be restricted to only 10 de Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft, retiring the previously mixed fleet including the Reims F406 Caravan II. This contract was due to be succeeded by the 2018 announcement by the Australian Government for the Future Maritime Surveillance Capability (FMSC), followed by an RFI release in October 2018.[3]

Fleet and bases[]

Headquartered in Adelaide, the company has three operational bases in Cairns, Darwin and Broome.[4] It operates a fleet of six DHC-8-202 and four larger DHC-8-315 'Dash 8s' modified for maritime patrol and surveillance. One further Dash 8 was formerly configured for the LADS contract. This aircraft has now been de-configured, and is stored at Cobham's Adelaide base.

The surveillance aircraft are equipped with Raytheon SeaVue surface search radars with additional Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Moving target indication (MTI) capability,[5] advanced electro-optical sensors and sophisticated communications suites.[1] They can operate day and night close to land below lowest safe altitude. These aircraft can search an area of 110,000 km² per flight.[6]

A state of the art surveillance information management (SIM) system, able to integrate surveillance and communication and provide real time communications to Customs headquarters in Canberra is due to be installed and operational by October 2008.[1]

Fleet[]

Surveillance Australia operate this LADS-equipped de Havilland Canada Dash 8, VH-LCL.

Surveillance Australia fleet currently operates 10 aircraft:

  • 2 Bombardier DHC-8-202 Dash 8 (as of August 2019)[7]
  • 4 de Havilland Canada DHC-8-202 Dash 8 (as of August 2019)[7]
  • 3 Bombardier DHC-8-315 Dash 8 (as of August 2019)[7]
  • 1 de Havilland Canada DHC-8-315 Dash 8 (as of August 2019)[7]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Australian Customs 2007 Annual Report Retrieved: 2008-02-05
  2. ^ "Cobham Signs A$1bn Coastwatch Contract"; Cobham plc Media Release Retrieved: 2007-11-11
  3. ^ "Maritime Surveillance Capability Project". www.homeaffairs.gov.au. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  4. ^ Surveillance Australia home page. Retrieved: 2007-11-11
  5. ^ "Raytheon Awarded SeaVue Radar Systems Contract for Australian Coastwatch"; Raytheon Media Release. Retrieved: 2008-02-06
  6. ^ Nick Gardner. "Cobham plc :: Home". cobham.com. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  7. ^ a b c d "Global Airline Guide 2019 (Part One)". Airliner World: 4. October 2019.

External links[]

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