Coastal Sentinels – Lilypad technology for littoral security

BY MARC MONTGOMERY

Many similarities can be drawn between national security and the security of one’s home – for nations with coastlines, the extended economic exclusion zone (EEZ) and littoral region might be considered as its yard and front steps. Many of us have taken advantage of technological advancements and have installed doorbell cameras to keep an eye on who comes on to our property. Well, countries want to do the same.

Where once the main threat to a nation was almost exclusively from military incursions, coastal threats are now many and varied.

There has been a multiplication and diversification of threats for nations with coastlines. There are resource threats – illegal fishing and mining, and metal salvaging from shipwrecks – environmental threats – illegal dumping of toxic waste or oil spills – and other perilous threats – the smuggling of drugs and weapons, human trafficking, and migrant incursions – that must be identified and analyzed strategically. National littoral regions are often vast, and involve the ocean surface, the skies above and the sea below, all making it difficult to survey adequately.

Listed as a CDR Top 100 Canadian Defence Company, Dartmouth-based GeoSpectrum Technologies Inc. has been working on new systems specifically designed to carefully monitor and identify coastal activity.

MARITIME DOMAIN AWARENESS

CDR had the opportunity to speak with Sean Kelly, ex-Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) officer and now Vice-President of Business Development at GeoSpectrum. Kelly notes that, typically such surveillance is carried out by patrol vessels, aircraft, and satellites. Given the vastness of the regions involved, the aforementioned surveyors are often limited in their ability to adequately monitor offshore activity. Furthermore, they are costly in terms of operational expense, maintenance, and personnel. These are assets that could be otherwise applied, especially at a time when many nations are increasingly financially distressed with regards to funding and personnel resources.

“There’ve been a lot of calls from countries around the world for persistent surveillance capability that can do everything without being a drain on resources and expenses,” Kelly told CDR.

LILYPAD

In response to these challenges, GeoSpectrum Industries has designed, engineered, and created a prototype product known as ‘Lilypad’. Lilypad is an offshore surveillance system with a “surface expression” that is also anchored to the seabed.

The all-Canadian company that is a globally recognized expert in underwater detection technologies, has created fully scalable platforms that can perform a multitude of offshore surveillance tasks. Acting as a prime contractor, GeoSPectrum Industries combine their underwater technologies with other cutting-edge products in surface and aerial radars, cameras, Automatic Identification System (AIS) and other technologies to create a precise Model Driven Architecture (MDA) system.

“We had our engineering team and combat systems people develop the idea. It’s not just a product but a concept of varying scalable products that we provide to countries and militaries for persistent surveillance, whether underwater, on the surface, or above the water,” says Kelly.

He points out that the system can involve anything from small, medium or large buoys to actual barge-like platforms, equipped with any variety of sensors and even armaments. He adds that having several Lilypads stationed in littoral waters provides far greater continuous, effective, coverage at an enormous cost-advantage over traditional manned platforms.

“In all situations, having that unmanned sentinel out there is a massive asset to protect your harbour entrances or strategic onshore areas. As well as being a scalable asset, you can add any type of system on the asset, including remote directed defensive capabilities,” Kelly told CDR.

With this potential multitude of surveillance technologies based each unit can be customized to fulfill client requirements.

Kelly tells CDR, “This is why we start with an environmental survey. The area is to be secured for the client. In some cases this can be a very simple sonar system, and in other cases it can be an incredibly complex structure of intricate systems. We’re always looking at various technologies that can be incorporated into our Lilypads. This includes the latest surveillance technologies, and incorporates methods of powering the unit if shore power is not possible”.

The Lilipad is superior to traditional surveillance that is executed by ships, planes, or satellites. Traditional surveillance typically monitors an area and then has to advance, whereas the Lilypad provides extensive area coverage continuously. The possibilities of the Lilypad are endless if located close enough to shore – power and data transfer can be cabled. If cabled connections aren’t possible other power options exist, including diesel generators, wind, solar, battery – or a combination of power sources that can operate for up to a year without maintenance with data relayed through RF or satellite.

The Lilypad is easily scalable and is designed to deal with any potential threat, including small drones or autonomous small boats. According to Kelly, had their units been in place in the Baltic Sea prior to the Nordstream Pipeline explosion in 2022, the Lilypads would have easily alerted authorities to a potential threat – authorities would have then been able to analyze the threat and prevent its harmful consequences.

WAVE AWAY

Kelly points out that while ships, planes, and submarines can be detected, even lone divers would be recognized. GeoSpectrum is able to incorporate a feature called ‘Wave Away’ – a non-lethal feature that deters incursions by divers.

Wave Away utilizes acoustic voice signals to audibly warn divers to move away from the area. If not complying with the warnings, “we can also play a varying amount of intense low frequency sound that can be escalated from an annoying sound, to a sound that is potentially painful to the ears, thus forcing the diver to swim away,” Kelly tells CDR. Using non-lethal methods is important because, as Kelly says, “you cannot be positive of who that diver might be”.

CANADIAN APPLICATIONS

The company has several international clients using Lilypad to monitor their, sometimes remote, littoral and EEZ areas. Canada, meanwhile, has the longest coastline in the world at over 243,000 km. This has presented its national defense leaders and representatives with the difficult task of monitoring our coasts through traditional means.

While the threat of a military incursion into Canada is unlikely, concerns around resource and environmental threats are high and are increasing as are the needs for alerts to these forms of emergencies.

“It’s more than just overt acts of war that we have to consider. We also have to be mindful of securing our economic zone from all kinds of potential threats, as not all countries follow environmental rules,” Kelly told CDR.

For example, vessel traffic through the North-West Passage (NWP) is becoming far more frequent, as Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic is challenged by several nations.

In a 2022 report, Canada’s Auditor General stated, “Overall, the federal government has not taken the required action to address long‑standing gaps affecting its surveillance of Canada’s Arctic waters. As a result, the federal organizations that are responsible for safety and security in the Arctic region do not have a full awareness of maritime activities in Arctic waters.”

Designed, engineered, and built in Canada, a series of GeoSpectrum Lilypads would be a very cost-effective method of achieving ameliorated surveillance of a region growing in importance on strategic, economic and sovereign grounds.

Marc Montgomery is a Regular CDR Contributor