As part of a program to address the need for complete, persistent, and accurate wide-area surveillance in tactical maritime situations, a new surveillance radar has completed a round of successful test and demonstration flights. Raytheon’s SeaVue XMC (eXpanded Mission Capability) radar is a next-generation maritime situational awareness package developed during for the Ocean Surveillance Initiative (OSI) program sponsored by the US Navy.
SeaVue XMC provides both radar and mission system capabilities, including automatically detecting, tracking, and sorting thousands of maritime targets simultaneously and correlating those radar tracks with Automatic Identification System (AIS) contacts. The system geographically registers radar detections to AIS data and digital nautical chart features for more precise tracking, threat location, and accurate cross-sensor cueing to the electro-optic system. It is currently operational on the United States (US) Customs and Border Patrol Dash 8 and the P-3 aircraft.
The demonstration showcased specific capabilities of the system including its performance in broad maritime areas where medium- to high-altitude persistent surveillance is required, in littoral waters with high-density traffic requiring fast contact discrimination, and in surveillance platforms where the cost or size of bandwidths is a consideration. It was also demonstrated where a reduction in operator workload is a requirement and where a mission system that is fully integrated with all aerial surveillance assets is needed (on the ground or in command centers).