Jamie Bennet
General Atomics‘ aeronautical systems business showcased its MQ-9B SeaGuardian unmanned aircraft system to the Northern Edge 2023, a military joint training exercise in the Gulf of Alaska.
During the event, the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.-built UAS provided real-time information on maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s operation centers, GA said Wednesday.
SeaGuardian’s data was transmitted to real-world and exercise watch floors including the Pacific Fleet, Pacific Air Forces, and the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Joint Exercise Control Group. The aircraft demonstrated other capabilities such as its electronic support measures, communication intelligence, automatic identification system, inverse synthetic-aperture radar and radar moving target indication.
The demonstration of the UAS was supported by other organizations including Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Sierra Nevada Corp., L3Harris Technologies and Raytheon Technologies.
Johns Hopkins APL provided the Minotaur Mission System, which processed the radar, sensor and video data. The ESM and COMINT payloads came from Sierra Nevada and L3Harris, respectively. SeaGuardian’s SeaVue multi-role radar was contributed by Raytheon.
