With its purchase of three MSS 6000 systems, Vietnam joins a customer list that includes Canada, Estonia, Finland, India and Portugal. But it is the first customer to integrate the system with a ground station, to which mission reports can be sent via satellite datalink.
Installed on new EADS Casa C-212-400 aircraft, the MSS 6000 systems will be used to patrol Vietnamese seas, to detect and suppress oil spills and illegal fishing activities, protect the economic zone and take part in search and rescue operations.
As its name implies, the MSS 6000 represents the sixth generation of SSC's maritime surveillance systems. Its predecessor was ordered by Greece, India, Norway, Poland, Portugual, Sweden and the USA. The latest version incorporates a side-looking airborne radar, still and video cameras, an automatic identification system, an IR/UV scanner, forward-looking infrared, and communication via high-speed satellite data link and HF radio. Information from the sensors is displayed in real time and integrated with a tactical map.
Built on technology developed by Ericsson, the system is marketed by SSC's airborne systems division, one of five within the group - the others are space systems, rockets and balloons, aerospace services, and satellite operations.
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Christer Colliander, an airborne systems division after-sales service manager, says the maritime surveillance systems' low price may once have been off-putting to some customers, who saw them as "too cheap". However, budgetary pressures have altered perceptions, and order sizes are increasing. And rising food prices have raised the level of interest in policing fish stocks, while the prioritisation of tourism in areas such as the Red Sea has sharpened concerns about the impact of oil spills.
Initially developed for the financially constrained Swedish coastguard, the MSS systems were intended to be small and dedicated, but expandable according to customer needs.
The next upgrade, MSS 7000, is likely to target improved on-board information handling, sensors and signal processing, perhaps incorporating blue/green lasers and advances in "sniffer" detection of air pollution. Developments in military technology will be monitored. "Today's expensive military technology is tomorrow's reasonably priced, globally available civil capability," says Colliander.
Source: Flight International