Driven by data: The RAF’s revamped maritime patrol capabilities | Computer Weekly
Summary
Over the inhospitable waters of the North Atlantic, Royal Air Force aircraft play a game of cat and mouse with Russian hunter-killer submarines, and data collection and management are at the heart of its operations. As recently as January this year, a Royal Air Force Poseidon from RAF Lossiemouth was involved in tracking a Russian landing ship, the RFN Aleksandr Shabalin, through the English Channel. Poseidon, also known by its US designation, P-8A, is very different from the flying boats and converted bombers that hunted U-boats during the Second World War, or the Shackleton and Nimrod aircraft of the post-war period. “We do that by building ‘recognised maritime pictures’ of the surface and subsurface, knowing where the people are that we would not like to be within reach of our submarines,” says squadron leader Peter Armitage, officer commanding of the P8 Tactical Operations Centre. The RAF’s P-8A fleet is supported on land by a dedicated data processing system, built primarily with components from Fortinet and NetApp.