Resumen de Advantages and disadvantages of some unmanned aerial vehicles deployedin maritime surveillance
Sanja Bauk, Nexhat Kapidani, Luis Sousa, Žarko Lukšić, Agim Spuža
The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of some unmanned aerial vehicles used for mar-itime surveillance. As examples, the Zephyr pseudo-satellite, as well as the AR5 and the AR3 mediumaltitude unmanned aircraft have been presented. A high-level Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,and Threats (SWOT) analysis is applied in this regard, as a tool to help assess the potential benefitsof UAVs in the current maritime surveillance context. Strengths as lightness, possibility of manuallaunching, low energy consumption, lower price in comparison to satellites, high seeing, sensing andcommunication features, capacity of both line of sight (LoS) and beyond line of sight (BLoS) oper-ations, large coverage, and durability of flight and like are highlighted. Threats such as high risk tooperations due to severe weather conditions, loss of human control over the systems due to their highdegree of autonomy, potential users’ reluctance to accept high-risk innovation and similar are agued, aswell. In addition, weaknesses as complexity of the systems and the requirement of highly skilled per-sonnel for these aircraft design, production, operation and maintenance, along with opportunities likelower costs, lower ecological and logistics footprints and higher efficiency are also taken into consid-eration. The appropriateness of these advanced aerial vehicles for monitoring and securing sea bordershas been intertwined within the context
