Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) To CENTCOM

The end of Amy Butler's Aviation Week article on BAMS is noteworthy.

Meantime, the first Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) UAS deployed to the U.S. Central Command has arrived in its Middle East-Central Asian theater of operations. The system is expected to conduct its first flight shortly, Shannon says.

The aircraft, a precursor to the full BAMS design, will support maritime surveillance requirements there. Navy officials demurred on deployment details, but it is likely the UAS would be collocated with Air Force Global Hawks that operate out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

While there are plenty of activities in the Persian Gulf that can keep this platform busy, I keep thinking this may be an effective system for dealing with pirates.

I don't believe that any of the international partners fighting piracy have the capabilities to prevent an attack, but the real challenge is catching the folks who attack and fail. BAMS appears to be a system that can address that challenge, by keeping tabs on the small boats that get chased off following attacks.

As it is right now, often when a pirate attack is broken up by a coalition response, or a successful defense by a ships crew, the pirate ship simply disappears into the mass of fishing boats by blending into the populated seas.

BAMS might be the capability that can keep the pirate vessel flagged for coalition forces for a much longer duration allowing coalition naval forces to track down and inspect the pirate vessel. This goes to the heart of the problem fighting piracy, everything is responsive, but if the responsive capabilities can be made more capable, that can have a long term effect of curbing pirate efforts, and reduce the risk to commercial shipping.

Previous discussion on the GHMD deployment here.