Australia: Raytheon Puts SeaVue XMC to the Test

September 6, 2013

Raytheon Company has completed successful test and demonstration flights of the SeaVue XMC (eXpanded Mission Capability) maritime surveillance radar in Australia. The flights have been conducted during the last year in coordination with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service.

As part of the Australian Border Protection program’s technology refresh initiative, an Australian Customs Dash 8 surveillance aircraft upgraded its SeaVue radar to the XMC configuration for the demonstrations. The SeaVue XMC radar system provides a next-generation maritime situational awareness package developed during the Ocean Surveillance Initiative (OSI) program. The OSI program was sponsored by the U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems Command to address a need for complete, persistent and accurate wide-area surveillance in the tactical maritime theater.

“SeaVue XMC provides our customers with unsurpassed maritime domain awareness capabilities,” said Jerry Powlen, vice president of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems in Raytheon’s Space and Airborne Systems business. “These demonstrations provide objective evidence that Raytheon can complement our industry-leading sensor technology with the information management tools required to provide real-time, actionable information to the warfighter.”

SeaVue XMC Advanced Capabilities

The SeaVue XMC maritime surveillance radar’s innovative features provide both radar and mission system advanced capabilities, such as automatically detecting, tracking and sorting thousands of maritime targets simultaneously and correlating radar tracks with Automatic Identification System (AIS) contacts.

The system also geographically registers radar detections to AIS data and digital nautical chart features, allowing for more precise target tracking, locating of threats and accurate cross-sensor cueing to the electro-optic system. The SeaVue XMC is currently the only system that offers these critical capabilities for persistent surveillance, tracking and identification of small targets in complex littoral environments.

Three days of flights from Cairns, Australia, demonstrated the upgraded capabilities to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, Royal Australian Air Force, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and Defence Material Organisation — and the U.S. Navy participated in the demonstrations.

Simon Luck, technical director for Australia’s Customs and Border Protection Service, said the demonstrated capabilities of SeaVue XMC were reinforced during the trial, in particular:

In broad maritime areas where medium- to high-altitude persistent surveillance is required;
In littoral waters with high-density traffic requiring fast contact discrimination;
In surveillance platforms where the cost or size of bandwidth is a consideration;
Where a reduction in operator workload is a requirement;
Where a mission system that is fully integrated with all aerial surveillance assets is required, on the ground or in command centers.