The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has selected the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc (GA-ASI) SeaGuardian medium altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (MALE UAV) for its Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle programme, the company announced on 3 December.
The number of SeaGuardian systems to be acquired by the JMSDF were not disclosed.
According to GA-ASI, the JMSDF earlier commenced trials of the SeaGuardian from its Hachinohe Air Base in northern Honshu in May 2023.
The latest development follows a GA-ASI announcement in February that year, which stated that the company had been selected to support the JMSDF for its MALE UAV Trial Operation Project.
The UAV type has already secured considerable success with the Japan Coast Guard (JCG), which agreed to acquire two more SeaGuardian UAVs in August 2024. The JCG earlier took delivery of two SeaGuardians in 2023, with the fleet being widely used to perform high-profile missions such as the G7 Summit in Hiroshima in May 2023 as well as search and rescue missions in the aftermath of the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in January 2024.
The JCG had initially operated a single SeaGuardian as part of a Company-Owned, Contractor-Operated (COCO) agreement with GA-ASI, which commenced from April 2022. Under the COCO agreement, the SeaGuardian performed Maritime Wide Area Search (MWAS) operations over the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean from October that year, staging from Hachinohe Air Base.
GA-ASI will offer its Optix+ software suite, a sensor fusion and sensemaking system which automatically gathers information from the SeaGuardian’s sensors as well as other data sources to provide an easily shared common operational picture. The UAV already features two multi-mode maritime surface-search radars with an Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and a high-definition full-motion video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras as well as electronic intelligence receivers.
by Jr Ng
