IMSAR, Aretķ, and Shield AI Autonomous Unmanned Maritime Search, Detection, Classification, and Communication Solution

The US Navy is interested in the employment of Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) sensor payloads capable of autonomous all-weather anti-surface search. IMSAR LLC, developer of low-Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) multi-mode airborne radar systems, is proposing to modify its sensor to integrate in the NavyÆs XFC platform and, through a partnership with Arete and Shield AI, provide a low-SWaP sensor solution capable of autonomously searching, locating, and identifying surface ships. The Department of Defense has deemed maritime domain awareness as critical to the homeland defense mission. A key component of threat assessment in a maritime environment is the ability to collect relevant Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) data, regardless of the weather, in order to Detect, Locate, Identify and Report (DLIR) potential threats. To support the US Navy in its requirement to protect critical, strategic maritime territories, IMSAR LLC is proposing to leverage the components of our low-Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), high-performance radar (designed for the AeroVironment Puma UAS) to develop a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Maritime Moving Target Indicator (MMTI) sensor to provide anti-surface search capability from a low-observable Group 1-2 UAS, such as the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Experimental Fuel Cell (XFC) UAS. This capability provides an expeditionary autonomous surface search function that is currently unavailable. This will directly feed the smaller SWAP-C to provide this capability.Ā The proposed system will autonomously search an area based on a reported last-known location. Using MMTI, the radar will scan wide areas to detect vessels within the area of interest and then autonomously switch modes to perform Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) and High Range Resolution (HRR) profiles to provide high resolution data that will be fed into advanced classification algorithms, which will automatically identify the targets. The identification of the targets along with their locations will then be transmitted back to a remote operator at a reduced data rate using the host platformÆs existing data link or using a directed communications signal from IMSARÆs radar aperture. The proposed solution will support the mission goal of the US Navy to autonomously perform ISR activities from a Tier 2 UAS by providing all-weather, wide-area DLIR capabilities from a low-SWaP-C radar system in an extremely small form factor and integrating these capabilities for autonomous mission operations.