The “Iranian Swarm� – A Recent Encounter

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Our system proved its capabilities and usefulness within 24 hours of commencing its maiden commercial voyage in early 2014. While traveling at approximately 20 knots near the Straits of Hormuz, our pilot program customer's ship suddenly encountered a “swarm� of 12 small Iranian wooden skiffs that approached the ship at high speed (i.e., 25-30 knots). At a range of just under two nautical miles, before the Iranian vessels were even visible to the naked eye (and not yet discerned by the ship's non-WatchStander radar units), WatchStander automatically identified and tracked the inbound vessels as potential threats.

Our system accurately identified each vessel's bearing, range, heading, speed and estimated time to intercept the ship. WatchStander assigned a threat probability to each incoming vessel, and as each vessel exceeded our system's attack probability threshold (at a range of approximately 1.5 nautical miles), WatchStander identified it as a threat. WatchStander automatically engaged the dominant threat (i.e., the one with the highest threat probability), and began recording the incident digitally and with video.

Thus, without human intervention, WatchStander directed its pan/tilt unit to swing around and direct its countermeasure against the vessel posing the highest perceived threat to the ship. Meanwhile, WatchStander continued to track and assess the other 11 vessels. When the leading Iranian skiff passed within 100 meters of the ship's bow and began to move away from the ship on its starboard side, WatchStander automatically instructed the port side pan/tilt unit to swing around and engage the highest probability inbound threat that remained. This process was repeated until all 12 wooden skiffs passed at high speed from the port to the starboard side of the ship protected by WatchStander.

Using our system's built-in, automatic digital and video recordings of any threat incident, we were able to easily re-create the “Iranian Swarm� and our system's response. Here is a replay of what our port-side camera and radar display showed on the ship's bridge during the actual event.

Clearly visible on the radar display, WatchStander has automatically identified and tracked the inbound vessels as potential threats. It has assigned a threat probability to each vessel and has automatically directed the port side pan/tilt unit (and related video camera and countermeasure) to engage the most threatening skiff. The dominant threat (in this case, vessel #3) has turned bright red, while the remaining threats are shown in pale red. The skiff posing the dominant threat is always visible in the center of the port side's video display, as shown above.*

* For the purposes of this incident re-creation, we elected to exclude our system's data window that tabulates all data for all vessel tracks. That data is normally displayed in the upper left corner of the proprietary WatchStander display screen on the ship's bridge. We have also excluded a replay of the video feed and radar display from the WatchStander unit on the starboard side of the ship (also normally shown on the bridge display), as the approaching vessels came from the ship's port side.