MQ-9B SeaGuardian^® is rewriting the practice of sea power (2024)

Sea power is a very old discipline, but unmanned aircraft are helping rewrite the way it’s done.

Leading the way is the MQ-9B SeaGuardian®, which enables the most advanced navies, coast guards, and other maritime authorities to patrol longer, detect more, and make existing units much more effective.

Manufactured by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., SeaGuardian has recorded a number of recent first-ever achievements in a range of operational and test environments around the world. Even as users prove out what the system can do as it begins to enter widespread service, they’re only scratching the surface of the ways MQ-9B will alter the practice of sea power.

SeaGuardian has shown it can hunt for and help prosecute submarines. It escorts naval surface task groups. It provides sensing, targeting, and communications for the battle force. It self-deploys from its home station and integrates seamlessly into normal aviation traffic.

As the world’s aerospace leaders gather for the Paris Air Show, MQ-9B has validated and reaffirmed its role as a sea power enabler across the globe.

In just two years’ time, the aircraft has recorded more than 12,000 operational hours in the service of the Indian Navy.

MQ-9B provided security and surveillance for the recent G7 summit at its island location in Hiroshima, Japan.

And in the spring, SeaGuardian joined the U.S. Navy for one of its most complex and challenging integrated exercises yet – one in which the aircraft joined with human-flown maritime helicopters in a major anti-submarine warfare exercise.

Sub-hunting

As part of this Integrated Battle Problem exercise in May, an MQ-9B aircraft flown by its crew from a ground control station and operated over satellite joined with U.S. Navy helicopter squadrons to search for submarines in a range off the coast of Southern California.

The exercise focused on manned-unmanned teaming, showing how a remotely operated aircraft can join traditional aircraft, such as U.S. Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, in tackling complex missions. In this example, the helicopters released special sensors called sonobuoys, which dropped into the surface of the ocean to detect submarines. The SeaGuardian then took over monitoring the data sent by the sonobuoys.

The sensors can listen for sounds or emit an active ping to search for undersea targets. They also network with battle force commanders to report what they’re detecting. SeaGuardian can monitor those network transmissions, release sonobuoys of its own, or both. The aircraft’s incredible endurance gives Navy commanders wide versatility in how to tackle a mission.

In the case of the recent exercise, helicopter crews flew out from San Diego, dropped their sonobuoys, and then SeaGuardian took over monitoring them. The sensors detected a simulated submarine. This meant other helicopters could deploy with precise data about the target’s location and course and then attack – in this case, dropping simulated torpedoes that sank the submarine for the purposes of the exercise.

Compare this process with an old-fashioned anti-submarine prosecution, in which human Navy crews might have needed to fly dozens of hours or more, wearing out people, aircraft, and equipment in order to prosecute a submarine. The remotely piloted MQ-9B does this at a fraction of the cost and with no crew on board to endanger over the water or in combat.

The U.S. Navy sub-hunting exercise was one of only several such exploits for SeaGuardian. Another involved the aircraft partnering with Navy carrier strike groups off the coast of Hawaii in April, working with warships, aircraft, and other units in order to ensure the safe passage of the surface ships.

Strike group integration

Carriers, cruisers, and destroyers, as well as F-35 Lightning II fighters, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes, MH-60 Seahawks, and P-8 Poseidons were all in the mix with MQ-9B SeaGuardian, which provided them with maritime domain awareness, information dominance, targeting capability, and more.

What the aircraft did, in effect, was serve as the distant eyes and ears for naval commanders. Its onboard sensors can see all through the visual and infrared spectrum, including – with its onboard multi-mode radar – through clouds, fog, mist, or smoke. Other onboard systems can hear throughout the radio frequency spectrum, collecting intelligence of all kinds that contributes to the most complete common operating picture possible.

No other large medium-altitude, long-endurance aircraft can contribute to sea power like this – and there are even more ways that SeaGuardian contributes. The aircraft’s proprietary Detect and Avoid System, invented by GA-ASI, means that it can operate in civil airspace just like any other aircraft. This eliminates the need for special arrangements or human-flown escort aircraft like those that remotely piloted aircraft might have needed in the past.

Also new: SeaGuardian self-deploys to far-flung operating areas. In each of the recent maritime exercises supported by MQ-9B, the aircraft took off from its home station in the California high desert and flew to the base where it was needed.

To participate in the Northern Edge exercise around Alaska in May, SeaGuardian flew more than 2,000 miles in a single hop, highlighting its extraordinary range and endurance. Then the MQ-9B flew its missions and took part in the various exercises and, when it was finished, returned home the same way, with a single flight. Compare that to older practices –in which an unmanned aircraft might have needed to be disassembled, boxed up, loaded into a cargo aircraft, flown to its operating location, and then reassembled there for use – and the savings in manpower, time, and operating costs are magnified.

Advanced onboard and supporting systems help make all this possible, including automatic takeoff and landing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and cutting-edge networks. Satellite operations mean that MQ-9B’s pilots and crews can be located anywhere, even thousands of miles from where the aircraft is operating. During Northern Edge, for example, around Alaska, the crews flew the SeaGuardian from the Pacific Northwest area of the United States at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

This remote operation not only takes human crews off the aircraft and removes them from harm’s way at sea. It means MQ-9B can cover other inhospitable areas, such as the cold, ice-covered polar regions, without burdensome hardship deployments for crews or the necessity to position other units for search and rescue in case of a mishap. Taking the people off the aircraft protects them and their support units – all while reducing cost and complexity.

The big challenges of the 21st century to seafaring nations and the responsible use of the oceans aren’t simple or easy to tackle. But the good news is that navies, coast guards, and others charged with sea power, maritime domain awareness, search and rescue, and other related missions have a tool ready to meet those challenges head-on in the MQ-9B SeaGuardian.