Monday, January 28, 2008

UAVs for Australian Whale Surveillance

The University of Queensland is using Aerocam Australia's 3 m long Shadow UAV for counting whales in the waters off Queensland. The Australian made Aerosonde UAVs have previously been flow across the Atlantic, in the Arctic and for Australian military surveillance. Aerosonde has been acquired by AAI who also make the shadow. So perhaps their aircraft could be used for dual purposes: to track the Japanese whaling fleet and the whales in Antarctic waters. This would allow a much larger area to be covered and with less risk to human life and at a lower cost.

Australia only has one antarctic equipped Airbus A319 aircraft, which therefor can only track one whaling vessel at a time. The aircraft crew cannot expect to survive a crash in antarctic waters. A fleet of UAVs could track all the vessels continually, recording video suitable for presentation in court. Loss of an aircraft would be a small financial cost and no loss of life. Also UAVs are much cheaper to operate. One crew on the groups would be able to fly all the aircraft at once.

2 comments:

  1. Dear Sir,
    I notice that your web page has no facility to translate your site into Indonesian- as you note yourself- has a larger speaking population than Korean and Japanese combined.
    Would it not be good manners to offer a translation into Indonesian as you assuage it a potential threat albeit contradictory to habitual Australian Imperialist Aggression and the theft of Indonesia's formerly Australian sanctified possession of Timur Timor and economically lucrative North West Gas Shelf following breakdown of Woodside-Sunrise Petroleum- Republik Indonesia royalty negotiations?

    PS- I shall be shortly commencing a blog on Indonesian Defence with special reference to defeat Australian Intel operations and documented sponsorship of terrorism via separatist movements.
    Your comment and readership would be most appreciated and I shall endeavor to keep you informed.
    I bid you a good day Sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. purba said February 18, 2009 12:36 AM:

    > ... your web page has no facility to translate your site into Indonesian ...

    Apologies, I have added an Indonesian translation.

    ReplyDelete