The UK Royal Navy has awarded a 12-month contract extension to Airbus covering the provision of satellite-based maritime surveillance services for the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC).

According to a June 28 Airbus release the contract follows the completion of a proof-of-concept phase and ensure the continued monitoring of areas of interest in UK waters through the use of optical and radar imaging as well as AIS (Automatic Identification System) data to build up situational awareness of activities within the UK Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

The JMSC, which is the UK government’s centre of excellence for maritime security, required a series of services that would provide intelligence to augment their own surveillance activities. Under the agreement, JMSC will benefit from a range of Airbus’ surveillance and analytics capabilities.

The contract includes, Vessel Detection Reports using SAR data analysis, either delivered in emergency mode for urgently required satellite tasking to monitor suspicious vessels of interest across the globe, or on a twice daily basis for general vessel identification as well as the classification of ‘dark’ vessels in key areas of interest.

In addition, the Defence Site Monitoring service, using automated algorithms applied to optical imagery, for the detection, recognition and identification of vessels will detail the evolution of port activity and raise alerts whenever abnormal activity occurs.