Defence
Months on station with hydrophones on the keel and no engine to mask them. Contacts, tracks and alerts to the command that owns the picture.
The point
A frigate on station is the most expensive way to keep a hydrophone in the water. A sail drone is the cheapest, and the quietest.
Maritime domain awareness is not a sensor problem, it is a presence problem. The straits and approaches that matter need something in the water for months, not for the length of a patrol. A crewed hull does that at the cost of its crew, its fuel and its own noise.
The Maistrale was designed around listening. No engine, no propeller, a keel pod with a hydrophone array and on-board classification. A line of three holds a strait; the picture goes to the command that owns it, over an encrypted link, and stays there.
We deliver
Detections from the keel array, classified on board and geolocated, with the raw audio kept for the analysts.
AIS, camera and thermal contacts from each hull, merged into one track table for the line.
Tracks that cross a line or enter an area raise an alert to the watch, with the evidence attached.
A summary of contacts, tracks and vessel status every twenty-four hours, in the format the watch already reads.
Feeds into the command and control system of the customer, on the customer's network, with the customer's keys.
Example
Example mission
Five months of quiet listening off the Ionian coast, as a line of three drones across the approaches to the gulf. Each hull carries the acoustic configuration and holds its station within a few hundred metres. Contacts are classified on board and reach the watch within minutes. The line is re-tasked from the control room when the command asks.
Example mission, not yet flown
How it runs
Area, duration, what counts as a contact and who receives it. We answer with a line geometry, a payload and a number of hulls.
Hulls arrive by road and go in from a quay near the area, or from Cagliari. Data flows from the first hour at sea.
Our control room keeps the line on station. The watch sees the same picture and can ask for a re-task at any time.
The full recording and the track table are handed over at the end. Nothing stays with us that the customer does not want kept.
Questions
Yes, on the link and at rest. The keys are the customer's. The control room sees vessel health and position; the content of the feed can be limited to the customer's network.
No. It is a sensor platform. Dual use here means the same hull serves civil monitoring and defence surveillance, not that it carries a weapon.
Our control room, from Sardinia, by Italian personnel. Operation from the customer's own centre is possible and is set up mission by mission.
An owned fleet with training and support is the exception to the service model. It is discussed case by case, with the yard building the hulls.
Next step
An area, a season and what counts as a contact. We come back with a line geometry and the sea days it takes.