Vigilance control system set to be tested on Merlin helicopter

Dubbed Vigilance, the system pod incorporates advanced radar, sensors and data processing to perform a range of tasks such as the early warning of air threats, anti-submarine warfare and co-ordinating fighter jet response among other capabilities.

Vigilance was developed by Lockheed Martin as a low-cost plug-and-play system partly in response to the UK’s ‘maritime patrol gap’ left after the scrapping of Nimrod, a dedicated patrol aircraft.

‘It is open architecture, which basically means you can plug in a whole heap of new sensors, equipment, weapons and communications through one heart that is the mission system — what we’ve called Vigilance,’ David Stanton, business development manager at Lockheed Martin, told The Engineer.

Lockheed Martin UK was awarded the £750m contract by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to sustain the capability of the Royal Navy’s multi-mission Merlin helicopter in 2006. The need has become more acute, however, after the next-generation Nimrod MRA4 due to be built by BAE Systems was cancelled in the Strategic Defence and Security Review of 2010. Indeed, a Commons Select Defence Committee report published just last month, entitled Future Maritime Surveillance, highlighted several key vulnerabilities.