Cobham Aust Delivers Final

After an almost three year bid process, Cobham’s National Air Support (NAS), the incumbent Coastwatch operator, won the $1 billion Sentinel contract (formerly known as CMS04) in March 2006 to provide 10 aircraft, crews and support to Customs until 2020. NAS has held the Coastwatch contract since 1995, and had operated a mixed fleet of Dash 8s, Reims Caravans and Britten Norman Islanders in the all-electronic, partial electronic and visual surveillance roles respectively.

However, for the new Project Sentinel, Customs specified that all aircraft must have a comprehensive electronic intelligence gathering capability in order to provide enhanced intelligence in all weather and at night if required. While the Caravans and Islanders were retired, four new Dash 8 Q300s were acquired from Bombardier, five of the existing Q200s were upgraded, and another Q200 was pulled off passenger carrying duties with sister company National Jet Systems and modified for the maritime surveillance role.

All 10 aircraft were modified, upgraded and returned to service in less than two years.

The final aircraft, Q300 VH-ZZE, is equipped with a comprehensive sensor suite and internal extended range fuel tanks allowing for up to 13 hours endurance.

It joins three other Q300s and six Q200s at Customs’s permanent bases at Broome, Darwin and Cairns and Cobham’s home base at Adelaide. The aircraft were all structurally modified by Field Aviation in Canada before their SV-2022 radars, Wescam MX-15 electro optical (EO) systems, and their UHF/VHF/SAT communications suites and associated avionics were installed and integrated by Cobham’s engineers in Adelaide.

“Just two years ago in March 2006, Cobham and the Australian Customs Service signed the Project Sentinel contract for provision of turnkey airborne civil maritime surveillance services, a critical part of Australia’s border protection capability,” Cobham Australia CEO Peter Nottage said. “Today we deliver into service the last of 10 specially equipped and modified aircraft under Project Sentinel. It is an achievement without parallel and ensures Australia has the most capable and advanced civil maritime platforms in the world protecting its borders. ” The final aircraft was formally accepted by the federal Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, who, along with Customs CEO Michael Carmody, went on a demonstration flight of the aircraft’s capabilities over the nearby Spencer Gulf.

“Coastwatch aircraft fly more than 2400 missions each year covering around 160 million square nautical miles on patrol for illegal fishing, people, drug and weapons smugglers, and quarantine and environmental threats,” said Minister Debus.

“They play a vital role in protecting Australia’s 38,000km of coastline and our vast offshore maritime area. ” Intelligence gleaned by the Coastwatch aircraft is used by Customs as well as various agencies such as the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Defence Force, and the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service. All NAS crews are trained in procedures for the collection and presentation of evidence.

The aircraft will be further upgraded over the next two years with the addition of a surveillance information management (SIM) system supplied by Galileo Avionica.

The SIM system is designed to automatically capture and integrate surveillance information from the aircraft’s sensors and transmit this in near real-time to ot

her aircraft, ships and the National Surveillance Centre in Canberra. The first aircraft is due to be equipped with its SIM system this October.

Media were given a demonstration of the aircraft’s capabilities prior to the handover ceremony, including those of the radar and EO/IR systems. The crew demonstrated the aircraft’s ability to monitor features in the littoral realm such as jetties, marinas, boat ramps and roads, as well as various vessels at sea ranging from a large bulk ore carrier off Port Adelaide, down to a six metre fishing runabout, all from stand-off ranges of 15km or more.

The Sentinel contract is the largest civil maritime surveillance contract in the world, and is seen as a model for many countries in the wider region looking to establish a similar capability.