WatchStander: Piracy was once considered an anachronistic phenomenon, but it has been back in the news for a few years now, largely due to pirate activity in Somali waters – and off the African coast in general.
As this issue seems to have become a given that shipping companies must take into account, research is underway to protect ships from attacks by modern pirates, who use small high-speed boats to approach their targets. The WatchStander system, which uses radars placed on both sides of the ship to detect small objects that appear to be moving towards interception, is part of this framework.
As reported in a relevant article by New Scientist, the system automatically raises an alarm and activates countermeasures in case a threat is detected. WatchStander aims to solve the most basic problem in modern piracy: the timely detection of pirates, whose vessels are difficult to detect by conventional systems (which are, after all, designed to detect large objects and filter waves).
If the system "sees" a vessel moving towards interception, it automatically targets the threat with a countermeasure, such as a very powerful strobe light, designed to confuse intruders.
In a test earlier this year, the WatchStander was installed on a liquefied natural gas tanker passing through the Strait of Hormuz, south of Iran. The system spotted a flotilla of Iranian fishing boats long before anyone else noticed them. “There were 12 small Iranian boats that passed in front of us. You couldn’t see them at first. We were getting ready to test the system when the alarm suddenly went off. The crew told us they were smugglers, you see them all the time in the Straits,” said David Rigsby, the company’s founder.
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