Japan Coast Guard Selects MQ-9B SeaGuardian RPAS

The Japan Coast Guard has chosen MQ-9B SeaGuardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) designed by General Atomics.

Operations under JCG RPAS Project will feature GA-ASI’s MQ-9B SeaGuardian and begin in October 2022, the company said in a statement.

SeaGuardian will be used to conduct wide-area maritime surveillance to support JCG’s missions, which include search and rescue, disaster response, and maritime law enforcement. This project follows a series of successful JCG flight trials in 2020.

SeaGuardian features a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar with an Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and High-Definition – Full-Motion Video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras. This sensor suite enables real-time detection and identification of surface vessels over thousands of square nautical miles and provides automatic tracking of maritime targets and correlation of AIS transmitters with radar tracks.