Surveillance Australia

Surveillance Australia Pty Ltd is an Australian aviation company. It is a subsidiary of National Jet Systems, which is ultimately owned by Cobham plc. It is primarily engaged in servicing the Australian Customs Service Coastwatch contract, flying surveillance patrols within the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (AEEZ). It supports operations of a single airborne laser depth sounder (LADS) aircraft for the Royal Australian Navy, this provided as a service via the aircraft owner, Fugro.

The aircraft fly over 20,000 hours a year of surveillance flying in the AEEZ, searching for illegal fishing vessels, people smugglers, drug importation, immigration and quarantine breaches, and also regularly assist in search and rescue operations.

Surveillance Australia has played major roles in several border protection operations, directly contributing to over 200 foreign fishing vessels being apprehended and destroyed for illegally fishing for shark fin, reef fish and dolphins in Australian waters each year.

In 2005, Surveillance Australia was awarded the A$1 billon Coastwatch contract that will see its aircraft operating through to 2020.

Headquartered in Adelaide, the company has three operational bases in Cairns, Darwin and Broome. It operates a fleet of six DHC-8-202 and four larger DHC-8-315 'Dash 8s' modified for maritime patrol and surveillance. One further Dash 8 is configured for the LADS contract.

The surveillance aircraft are equipped with Raytheon SeaVue surface search radars with additional Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Moving target indication (MTI) capability, advanced electro-optical sensors and sophisticated communications suites. They can operate day and night close to land below lowest safe altitude. These aircraft can search an area of 110,000 km² per flight.

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