Raytheon Ansch?tz's SMARTBLUE for Oil, Gas Firm

Raytheon Anschütz announces the recent contract award for its SMARTBLUE maritime situational awareness system on board two vessels being built in South Korea for a major oil and gas company. 

The two vessels will operate on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. For each vessel, Raytheon Anschütz will provide two 12ft X-band radars integrated with AIS to a SMARTBLUE sensor management pack. The pack will correlate the incoming data from the sensors and provide information locally through an operator workstation located in the vessel’s central control room. Track information and data will be passed through data link to the maritime control center in Norway, allowing the water space surrounding the asset to be carefully monitored and controlled by operators ashore. The system will be designed and managed from the Raytheon Anschütz’s Portsmouth, UK office but assembled and tested by Raytheon Anschütz Singapore Pte Ltd to ensure local content, affordability, and close proximity to the end user’s project management team. After installation and setup, the system will run automatically, alarming only to alert the operator when an anomaly is detected.

James Norwood, Area Surveillance Leader for Raytheon Anschütz said: “This contract win has been the culmination of three years of hard work by our dedicated software development team. For this customer, we are breaking new ground in how we will build, deliver and manage this SMARTBLUE solution, maximizing the value our customer will realize with this advanced offshore security solution.“

SMARTBLUE is an open software architecture ‘Command and Control’ (C2) system, allowing clients to plug and play any surveillance sensor to meet individual requirements and budget. The system performs a number of functions and capabilities, including boundary and sector alarms, vessel traffic monitoring, own vessel monitoring, contact classification and collision avoidance. 

In its basic form, SMARTBLUE systems can be integrated with cameras, AIS and radar thereby providing the operator with an easy-to-decipher display. In its advanced form, SMARTBLUE can incorporate sonar systems for underwater detection; meteorological systems; hydrographic monitoring systems; iceberg detection and tracking; oil spill detection and tracking. It can also feature threat deterrents, such as water cannons, laser dazzlers and acoustic devices.