The oil and gas industry is concerned about maritime affairs, especially piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Besides disrupting the supply chain, piracy sends insurance costs soaring.
So far, the pirates have been getting the better of warships sent by 23 countries, including the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Sweden, to patrol the region.
The explanation for the pirates’ success is simple: The area they work in is far too large for the number of available warships. Even naval commanders tasked with the job of deterring the pirates say that.
“It’s not an easy challenge, thousands of square miles of sea with the air-space above. We could have a force of hundreds and hundreds of ships and still have gaps in our patrol area,” said the UK’s Rear Adm. Phillip Jones.
A question of size
“Geography is not on our side,” Jones said, a day after the European Union launched its own antipiracy naval force called the Eunavfor Atalanta mission. Still, Jones drew attention to one possible bit of technology that could turn the tide.
“The more contributing capabilities to that surveillance mission the better,” he said. “I’m constantly looking to source other elements of surveillance for which UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] would be very welcome.”
Welcome is the right word, and the international mission aimed at ending piracy in the region is in very sore need of UAVs. So far, according to reports, there are only a handful of surveillance aircraft and no UAVs at all.
This sounds like the right time and place for the entrance of Global Hawk, the UAV of all UAVs. In case you have not heard of it, Global Hawk is produced by the Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. and, in effect, is an unmanned U-2 surveillance aircraft.
Enter Global Hawk
To cut to the chase, the high-flying Global Hawk is a drone capable of collecting intelligence from above 60,000 ft altitude for a day or more at a time. Thus far, it has turned in nothing but stellar performances, largely for the US Air Force.
But the US Navy, as well as other naval forces around the world, is highly interested in the maritime capabilities of the Global Hawk, and plans have been in place to deploy the aircraft over trade lanes and other sensitive maritime locations.
In fact, last fall the Navy was said to be considering deploying its first Global Hawk to an air base near Iraq to experiment with its ability to conduct maritime surveillance.
According to industry analysts, those UAVs will give the Navy a tool to use for monitoring shipping activity in the Persian Gulf, where several scrapes with Iranian ships have occurred in recent months.
But if the Navy’s Global Hawks can look at the Persian Gulf, they also can—and should—make a regular sweep of the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden.