Lockheed Martin aiming to integrate ViDAR with MH-60R's sensor suite

Lockheed Martin announced on 27 January that it will work together with Australian company Sentient Vision Systems to further evolve the capability of the latter’s Visual Detection and Ranging (ViDAR) maritime surveillance system for potential integration with the sensor suites on the MH-60R Seahawk multirole naval helicopter.

The US company said in a statement that it had signed a contract with Sentient to further test and develop ViDAR, which it described as “a persistent wide-area, motion-imaging (WAMI) system that is designed to autonomously detect, geo-locate, track, and classify objects over vast areas of terrain” below an aircraft or an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Sentient Managing Director Paul Boxer welcomed the contract award, saying, “We are excited about the potential for ViDAR to be integrated with sensor suites across Lockheed Martin’s MH-60R Seahawk platforms globally as this represents a significant opportunity for Sentient.”

“We look forward to working closely with their engineers to complete the testing, development, and integration validation phases for the system,” he added.

Sentient, which provides intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)-related technology solutions, has already worked together with Lockheed Martin in the past, with the former’s Kestrel detection software being successfully trialled in the MH-60R Software Integration Lab for consideration of future MH-60R capability enhancements.