AeroVironment has announced the successful maritime demonstration of Interoperability to Interchangeability (I2I) operations by the US Navy and Royal Navy using AeroVironment’s PUMA 3 AE small unmanned aircraft systems. The demonstration was part of a combined event – International Maritime Exercise 2022/Cutlass Express 2022 (IMX/CE 22), the company writes in a press release.
IMX/CE 22 is the largest maritime exercise in the Middle East with more than 60 partner nations and organisations participating with 9,000 personnel and 50 ships.
The I2I capability demonstration was supported by AeroVironment as part of the US 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59 team, denoted as Task Force X (TF-X), participating in IMX/CE 22. TF-X was comprised of various multinational government and industry partners working together to integrate and demonstrate new unmanned systems capabilities for US and coalition naval forces in a series of pre-planned serials.
During the exercise, AeroVironment’s BLUE HOTEL computer vision and analytics solution demonstrated the visual identification of maritime targets simultaneously from multiple UAV and USV video feeds in real-time during all of the TF-X serials, the company writes. It was also used by the US Navy as the primary video repository and distribution hub for TF-X, providing all coalition partners with access to real-time video feeds and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) analytic results for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). The AI/ML software enabled the users to quickly sift through the large amounts of video data, pinpointing individual vessels of interest, and providing real time information on their activities throughout the exercise.
JH
