The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) wants drones, and a lot of them. The agency has made more than €67 million available for unmanned aircraft that will fulfil “the various maritime surveillance needs in general, including fisheries, illegal immigration, anti drug trafficking, etc.” as well as “other public purposes on an emergency basis”.

In documents published at the end of July, EMSA says it is looking for a company or companies to provide three different types of drone to monitor “the different operational domains”: medium-size, long-endurance drones; larger-size RPAS services with long-endurance and a comprehensive set of sensor capabilities and drones with vertical take-off and landing abilities.

The data and imagery gathered by the aircraft will be used by EMSA, the European Fisheries Control Agency, and Frontex, which is soon to become the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCG).

As part of the European Commission’s 2015 ‘border package’ that introduced the new regulation transforming Frontex into the EBCG, cooperation between EMSA, Frontex and the European Fisheries Control Agency was strengthened, obliging them to work together to “support national authorities carry out coast guard functions at national and Union level and, where appropriate, at international level.”

Amongst the new cooperation tasks are “providing surveillance and communication services based on state-of-the-art technology, including space-based and ground infrastructure and sensors mounted on any kind of platform”, hence EMSA’s intention to acquire new drone systems.

EMSA and Frontex also cooperate on the basis of a ‘Service-Level Agreement’ (SLA), which governs their work on “border surveillance, interception of vessels suspected of engaging in criminal activities and cross-border crime and support for search and rescue at sea.”

An EMSA press release issued to announce the signing of the agreement said: “EMSA assists Frontex in providing several Eurosur Fusion Services (EFS), including the tracking of vessels suspected of being engaged in criminal activities and people smuggling and the monitoring of suspicious activities.”

As well as the €67 million tender for drones to be used for ‘maritime security’, EMSA has made up to €10 million available for a company or companies to provide drones for emissions and pollution monitoring, and is offering up to €520,000 for a “RPAS [Remotely Piloted Aerial System] exploitation Data Centre (RPAS-DC)… The RPAS-DC shall provide the means for users to exploit the data collected during RPAS missions. A scalable service should be foreseen in terms of having a number of simultaneous RPAS deployments and missions and therefore a number of concurrent flights.”

EMSA’s €67 million security tender closes on 17 October. Perhaps the amount of money available will be more tempting to Europe’s drone companies than a recent, similar effort by Frontex, which made €2.5 million available for drones to undertake surveillance of the Italian and Greek maritime borders, but failed after no bids were received.

According to a Frontex spokesman, the agency has not been deterred: it is “planning to launch a similar tender in the future”.

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2016/oct/eu-emsa-drones1.htm