German Navy to field SeaGuardian unmanned aircraft
Seen featuring its disctinctive underfuselage fairing for the Leonardo Seaspray 7500 surface search radar, the SeaGuardian has been approved for procurement by the German Navy. (Janes/Gareth Jennings)
The German Navy is to field the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc (GA-ASI) MQ-9B SkyGuardian/SeaGuardian unmanned aircraft system (UAS), the Budget Committee of the Bundestag disclosed.
The planned procurement was included in a wider tranche of approvals posted on 18 December, in which the committee noted the âprocurement of MQ-9B drones for the German Navy for unmanned maritime reconnaissance and for submarine hunting with sonobuoysâ.
The notification did not disclose proposed numbers or a delivery timeline.
The SeaGuardian is essentially the SkyGuardian equipped with the Leonardo Seaspray 7500 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar in a detachable underfuselage fairing. Acquiring the SeaGuardian is in line with the German Navy's recent acquisition of the Boeing P-8A Poseidon multimission maritime aircraft (MMA), the first of eight of which arrived in Germany on 7 November. The concept of operations sees the unmanned SeaGuardian acting as a force multiplier for the manned Poseidon, providing over-the-horizon sensor and weapons capabilities.
In this respect, German Naval Aviation (Marineflieger) will employ the same concept of operations as Denmark, which recently signed for the SeaGuardian and is expected to shortly do the same for the Poseidon, and the United Kingdom, which has acquired both systems (as has Canada and India). Norway too fields the Poseidon, and the SeaGuardian is in competition in that country currently.
The SkyGuardian/SeaGuardian has a maximum operating altitude of 45,000 ft, a maximum endurance of more than 40 h, and a maximum airspeed of 200 kt. It has nine external stores or stations for carrying sensors (in addition to the integrated undernose-mounted Wescam MX-20 high-definition electro-optic/infrared [EO/IR] camera) and/or weapons.
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