Gulf states to acquire sea drones from US to counter illegal maritime activities

Middle East, News, US March 10, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

Gulf Cooperation Organization countries have turned to the U.S. for expanding their fleet of unmanned vessels in Middle Eastern waters to counter the illegal drug and human trafficking in the region.

According to a top commander from the U.S. Navy’s Central Command Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, at least six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have decided to increase the number of unmanned maritime patrolling units in the Middle Eastern region. These countries include Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman.

“Bahrain and Kuwait have publicly committed to acquiring these systems. Every other country in the region is to some degree along that path of acquisition,” Cooper said in a briefing. The Sea Drones or Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) are equipped with radars and optics that allow maritime patrols to increase their domain of awareness.

Deployment of advance USVs would allow the GCC states to carry out complete surveillance of maritime regions in the Persian Gulf, particularly the 35 miles-wide critical choke point at the Gulf of Oman.

The U.S. Navy has been working to develop a fleet of high-tech USVs to be deployed in the Persian Gulf in order to monitor Iran’s maritime and naval activities in the region. The U.S. Navy along with its GCC partners has been working with airborne and submerged drones to monitor the naval and maritime activities in the region, however, unmanned surface boats are a rather new concept that the U.S. reckons to be essential for future security in the region.

Equipped with solar panels and high-tech surveillance systems, a sailing drone vessel can be deployed in the waters to monitor and record maritime activities within a range of 60 miles radius. The radius of surveillance can be increased by maneuvering the drones around. A conventional maritime patrolling unit can monitor only 20 miles radius from a given spot. The inclusion of USVs would immensely improve GCC nations’ surveillance capabilities.

*^{U.S. Naval Forces Central Command testing Saildrone Explorers equipped for MDA missions. (Image Credit: SailDrone)}*

The U.S. Navy Admiral Brad Cooper also highlighted illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons by criminal and terrorist organizations is on the rise in the region. He mentioned that the U.S. and its allies have captured more than 5,000 weapons, 1.6 million rounds of ammunition, $60 million worth of illegal drugs, 7,000 proximity fuses for rockets, and 2,000 kilograms of propellant used for rocket-propelled grenades over the course of only two months.

The U.S. Navy has been experimenting to combine artificial intelligence into the sea drone and working on increasing their endurance by integrating solar energy to power the vessels. One of the best-performing systems under consideration for deployment in the Persian Gulf is Saildrone’s 33-foot-long Voyager platform.

The San Francisco-based Sea drone manufacturer and operator company, Saildrone offers a wide range of autonomously sailing vessels equipped with high-tech sensors, cameras, and radars. The Sea Drones facilitate advanced maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions powered by “proprietary machine learning” and Saildrone’s purpose-built platform. Saildrone operates 100s of autonomous vessels all around the world for many clients including Pentagon.