OCEAN 2020, carried out under the European Union’s Preparatory Action on Defense Research (PADR), is Europe’s biggest maritime-surveillance technology development program. On 20 and 21 November one of OCEAN 2020’s first two scheduled demos was carried out.

Photo: Leonardo

The OCEAN2020 consortium, coordinated by the Italian multinational LEONARDO, and working with a total of 42 partners from 15 European countries, includes a strong institutional participation from the MoDs of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Lithuania, with further support from the MoDs of Sweden, France, the UK, Estonia and the Netherlands. GMV has a twofold participation in the project, from its subsidiaries of Spain and Portugal.

GMV’s particular contribution focuses on C2 (Command and Control) and JISR (Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance), in keeping with the company’s international track record in these areas. As part of Spain’s participation in NATO’s MAJIIC (Multisensor Aerospace /Ground Joint ISR -Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance- Interoperability Coalition) project, GMV is responsible for the SAPIIEM system (made up by several systems such as ATENEA, COLLECTOR, CSD SIERRA, SIERRA tools and C2NEC), which pools information from several sources in different formats, providing intelligence analysts with the necessary wherewithal for exchanging ISR information and workflows, thereby ensuring interaction in all JISR phases. GMV’s OCEAN2020 participation also includes the design and development of a Brussels-based European Centre of Maritime Operations, to be set up under the project.

Coordinated by the Italian Navy, this demonstration involved sending to the Cartagena-based Maritime Surveillance and Operations Center (Centro de Operaciones y Vigilancia de Acción Marítima: COVAM) information on moving targets detected by the radars of the frigate “Santa María” deployed in Italy, while also streaming a video from the Spanish drones Pelícano (UAV) and Seadrone (USV), controlled from the frigate. The information received in COVAM was then sent on to the experimental Maritime Operations Centre set up in Brussels. For this purpose a corporate network also had to be designed and set up in order to handle information from other Italian, Greek and French drones through their respective national operations centers.

From a technical point of view, tapping into COVAM’s capabilities, the demonstration represented integration in the EU’s maritime surveillance MARSUR network of the MoD’s command and control systems, especially designed by GMV for the project.

This eight-day demonstration involved six operations centers, six ships and ten different types of drones, including UAVs, USVs and underwater vehicles.