Airborne Compact Electro Optic Infrared (EO/IR) system for Maritime Surveillance Mission

Airborne Electro-Optic /Infra-Red (EO/IR) system is the major workhorse for Maritime Surveillance and Search & Rescue (SAR) for object detection, recognition and identification from an airborne platform. Often, the EO/IR system is integrated as part of mission suite, which includes other sensors like Maritime Patrol Radar (MPR), Automatic Identification System (AIS), Communication Support Measures (CSM) etc. along with multiple Line of Sight (LOS) and Satellite links. This paper brings out the development of such a compact airborne HD EO/IR system along with its tight integration to a mission suite that is primarily intended at maritime surveillance and SAR roles from a Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA). This paper also describes the software integration of EO/IR with Mission Management System (MMS) and Multifunctional Tactical Console (MTC) achieving efficient and effective exploitation of the EO/IR system. The details of various user interfaces of MTC, command and control operations related to EO/IR along with map based operations are also brought out. Finally, we demonstrate such an integration in a lab based set up.