Performances of some autonomous assets in maritime missions

The paper deals with key features of some autonomous assets, i.e., unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles used for marine surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Firstly, performances of Airbus Zephyr S HAPS (Solar High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite), Tekever AR5 Life Ray Evolution and the AR3 Net Ray medium altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been analysed. Then, ECA Group A18 and A9 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) features have been presented. The strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) approach is applied to position appropriately these UAVs and AUVs in the context of maritime security operations. The need for further investigation in the field is reveiled as well. The analysed vehicles are assets deployed with the Europen Commission’s (EC) COMPASS2020 project and tested over European seas.