A large fleet of warships from NATO’s Response Force (NRF) sailed from ports across Europe on 13 October to take part in the maritime component of Exercise NOBLE JUSTIFICATION in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, which will encompass the anti-submarine and the electronic warfare components.

NOBLE JUSTIFICATION will prepare and test the highest levels of readiness for rapid response to any NATO contingency. It also develops force integration, multinational interoperability and enhance readiness by building joint capability and deployability through a high density, high threat scenario in which NATO will respond to a threat to its integrity and the sovereignty of its member states.

On 7th October Transas Marine Pacific and its local partner Mercuries Data Systems (MDS) announced that they had secured a valuable contract for the Taiwan Coast Guard Administration for installation and commissioning of the National Coastal Surveillance System.

This mission-critical system is based on the Transas Navi-Harbour software employing advanced features for accurate detection, tracking and identification of small and high-speed targets. Taiwan Coast Guard will be provided with real time data on any activities occurring in a coastal zone thus ensuring full control over those waters.

Real-time metocean data transmitted by a Fugro SEAWATCH Wavescan buoy is enabling energy industry construction expert Technip to plan its operations more effectively, leading to improved safety and cost-efficiency, it was reported on 7th October.

Work is well underway on Technip’s largest UK North Sea contract to date. Located West of Shetland, BP’s Quad 204 project involves replacing the existing Schiehallion production facility with a new, purpose-built FPSO (floating, production, storage and offloading facility) and installing extensive new subsea infrastructure.

Wavescan buoy ready for deployment on board Fugro Symphony

Fugro Wavescan buoy deployed in BP’s Quad 204 project

The European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) is a major industrial project developed by eight UNIFE (the European Rail Industry Association) members: Alstom Transport; Ansaldo STS; AZD Praha; Bombardier Transportation; CAF; Mermec; Siemens Mobility and Thales in close co-operation with the European Union, railway stakeholders and the GSM-R industry.

There are two basic components of ERTM: the European Train Control System (ETCS) an automatic train protecting system (ATP) to replace the existing national ATP systems. In addition there is GSM-R, a radio system for providing voice and data communication between the track and the train based on standard GSM using frequencies especially preserved for rail application with certain specific and advanced functions.

PDG Helicopters (subsidiary Irish Helicopters) EC 135 Helicopter carrying out mobilisation of materials at Ardnakinna Lighthouse (Co. Cork) in preparation for planned lighthouse maintenance. Ardnakinna Lighthouse is owned and operated by the Commissioners of Irish Lights.

The General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) of the UK and Ireland have announced a £13M seven-year contract to PDG Helicopters for the provision of helicopter services to cover all three Authorities.

Provision of one helicopter supplier across the GLAs will deliver significant cost savings of around £7.9M to the General Lighthouse Fund, which pays for the safety critical work of the GLAs to provide a reliable, efficient and costeffective marine aids to navigation service around the coast of UK and Ireland.

Until now each authority has contracted its own helicopter service provider and co-ordinated its own activities. The decision to award a single tri-GLA contract for helicopter services is a first for the participating authorities, who established a cross-GLA project team to manage the procurement process.

Almarin. the Spanish aids to navigation supplier, reports that it has provided fourteen buoys to OAS for the marking of works, part of the GNL del Plata project in Uruguay, currently under construction. Contractor OAS contacted Almarin for the supply of aids to navigation to mark an exclusion zone for the provisional marking of the works.

At left: Rt Hon John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Transport with responsibility for Ports, welcomes the UK Major Ports Group manifesto with Associated British Ports Chief Executive James Cooper at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham on 29th September.

United Kingdom Major Ports Group (UKMPG) launched a significant new manifesto – Ports4Prosperity – for the UK ports industry at the Party Conferences in Manchester and Birmingham held towards the end of September.

Representing 41 of the UK’s major ports, UKMPG has called on the Government to work with the ports sector to support UK industry.

UK ports play a huge role in delivering national prosperity: 95% of the nation’s trade in goods is moved by sea; UK ports support 400,000 jobs and contribute over £21 billion to the economy every year.

On 25th September EUROCONTROL launched the Collaborative Environmental Management Specification (CEM) that sets out a unique collaborative approach to managing environmental impacts at and around airports.
Said Frank Brenner, Director General of EUROCONTROL: “The CEM Specification supports and facilitates the already considerable efforts being made by airports, aircraft operators and air navigation service providers to deal with the environmental impact of their daily operations. It formalises collaboration between these core operational stakeholders by setting out generic high-level requirements and recommended practices, necessary for setting up CEM working arrangements at an airport.”

It was reported by the US Federal Aviation Administration on 28th September that air traffic controllers who normally work at the FAA’s Center in Chicago En Route Center in Aurora, Illinois are now working at other surrounding FAA air traffic facilities to help safely maximize the traffic flow in and out of the Chicago-area airports while the FAA and its telecommunications contractor, Harris Corporation, repair damaged communications equipment at Chicago Center. Some Chicago Center controllers also are travelling to other high altitude air traffic centres near Minneapolis, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Cleveland to assist controllers at those locations and minimize disruptions for travellers.

On 24th to 26th February 2015 the Royal Institute of Navigation is hosting INC 15 at the Manchester Conference Centre.

This International Navigation Conference will bring together experts from around the world to discuss the latest technological developments and issues across all the domains of modern navigation: land, sea, air and space. A programme of keynote presentations and workshops will cover areas such as GNSS and Galileo, indoor positioning, autonomous transport, security and resilience of navigation in the world of cyber-attacks, and new quantum technologies.

Conference call for papers is open until 24th October 2014. Readers interested in submitting a paper are invited to use this link.

Exhibition and sponsorship packages are also available, visitors are invited to contact Sally-Anne Coole at conference@rin.org.uk for more details or use this link.

For more information, and to register, you are invited to use this link.

Videotel, specialists in maritime e-Learning, has launched a new edition of its Training, Mentoring and Assessment On Board programme which supports the IMO requirement for a standardisation of training and assessment for all member state countries as part of the revised and updated STCW, otherwise known as the Manila Amendments.

At about 2000 on 29th October 2013, the general cargo ship Bosphorus grounded at Lytton Rocks Reach in the Brisbane River after the ship’s helmsman unintentionally put the helm the wrong way.

By the time that the Brisbane Marine Pilot on board the ship realised that the helm had gone the wrong way, it was too late to prevent the ship from grounding in the narrow section of the river. There were no reported injuries, damage or pollution as a result of the grounding.

The ATSB’s investigation found that the application of incorrect helm was not identified by the ship’s crew and that the ship’s safety management system documentation provided no guidance in relation to the allocation of function-based roles and responsibilities to members of the bridge team during pilotage.

Full report available here.

Transas Marine Pacific reported from Singapore on 19th September that it had successfully completed the upgrade of a simulator complex for the training centre of Western Shipping Pte. Ltd.

It is understood that the simulator class was upgraded to the latest version of the Transas navigational simulator NTPRO 5000 to fully support ECDIS training in line with the STCW 2010 requirements. In addition, a new full mission shiphandling simulator Class A was installed for advanced training capabilities.

It was announced from Brussels on 11th September that the European Commission has invited Member States to propose projects to use € 11.9 billion of EU funding to improve European transport connections. This is the largest ever single amount of EU funding earmarked for transport infrastructure.

Member States have until 26th February 2015 to submit their bids. This funding will be concentrated along nine major transport corridors which, taken together, will form a core transport network and act as the economic lifeblood of the Single Market (see map here). Funding will remove bottlenecks, revolutionise East-West connections and streamline cross border transport operations for businesses and citizens throughout the EU.

It was announced from Washington on 12th September that the National Transportation Safety Board has released Safer Seas 2013: Lessons Learned From Marine Accident Investigations, a compilation of accident investigations that were published in 2013, organized by vessel type with links to the more detailed accident reports.

This 39-page report contains a summary and the probable cause of 21 marine accidents in US waters. It brings the lessons learned from these accidents to the maritime community in an easy-to-use summary document.

Safer Seas 2013 is available here by kind permission of NTSB ©.

On 5th September it was announced from Washington that the Department of Defense has signed a memorandum of understanding to share space situational awareness data with the Republic of Korea’s Defense Ministry.

This accord provides South Korea’s air force with higher-quality and more timely space information tailored for its specific purposes in exchange for satellite-positional and radio-frequency information it will provide to US Strategic Command (TRANSCOM), the DoD agency responsible for space situational awareness, officials said.

A few weeks before this US agreement with ROK STRATCOM hosted a Space Table Tabletop Exercise (TTX). This brought together key leaders from the Department of Defense and Allied nations, to discuss the integration of space capabilities which provide mission-essential functions in a congested, contested and competitive space environment. – image by the Space and Missile Systems Center courtesy of the 50th Space Wing public web site

© illustration courtesy of Qnective ME and Elcome

It was announced from Dubai, UAE, on 8th September that Elcome International, a marine electronics services, systems and equipment provider in the Middle East and one of the largest marine technology suppliers in the world, is playing a key role in building a new maritime communication network for the Sultanate of Oman.

Under a subcontract awarded in April 2014 by Frequentis AG of Austria, Elcome is supplying key components of the network, as well as system integration, installation, training and maintenance for equipment in the operations centre and at remote sites.

© illustration courtesy of Qnective ME and Elcome

The Transas T-Bridge system presented as SMM 2014 in Hamburg, in September. © Photograph by kind permission of Transas Marine

On 8th September Transas Marine reported that it had expanded its extensive product range with the launch of the T-Bridge, said to be the most advanced integrated navigation system where professional bridge equipment meets aviation, automation and even tablet technology.

This new Transas T-Bridge, which was being presented at SMM 2014 in Hamburg, brings together diverse systems into a single bridge environment, where data sources are combined to provide a full and clear picture to support efficient decision-making.

Australia’s marine science community is celebrating the arrival of the new Marine National Facility research vessel Investigator into its home port of Hobart, Tasmania on 9th September.

With almost $20 million worth of scientific equipment, the 94 metre loa vessel is capable of mapping the sea floor at any depth, collecting weather data 20km into the atmosphere, analysing fish species with sonar and revealing the composition of the sea bed 100m below the sea floor.

To increase the options it has available to tackle airspace infringements, the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), it was announced on 1st September, may ask pilots who infringe controlled or restricted airspace to sit a short online test to assess their airmanship skills. The test will only be accessible with a secure password, sent by the CAA to the infringing pilot.

The CAA said the move was a further attempt to reduce the large number of airspace infringements still occurring in the UK every year.

The Royal Institute of Navigation is launching an exciting new international conference series, tackling some of the biggest, most cutting-edge issues across all the domains of modern navigation: land, sea, air and space.

In this first event in a new series of world-class conferences, RIN will be highlighting the state of the art in fields such as GNSS and Galileo; indoor positioning; autonomous transport; security and resilience of navigation in the world of cyber attacks and new quantum technologies.

Take a look at the Advance Notice and Call for Papers.

The UK Airports Commission reported from London on 2nd September that it had announced its decision not to add the inner Thames estuary airport proposal to its shortlist of options for providing new airport capacity by 2030.

Following detailed further study into the feasibility of an inner Thames estuary airport the commission has concluded that the proposal has substantial
disadvantages that collectively outweigh its potential benefits.

Commenting on the Airports Commission’s decision of 2nd September to reject the plan for a Thames estuary airport, Richard Threlfall, KPMG’s UK head of infrastructure, building and construction, said, “The Thames estuary option, for all concerns raised, is a radical and visionary solution to the real capacity and connectivity problem. We have been talking about the capacity issues since the 1960s and we could still be talking about this in 2060. From a business and economic perspective, the conversation has gone on long enough and a decision on the solution needs to be made.”

Artist’s impression of one of the first two Full Operational Capability satellites (SAT 5-6). The pair were launched together aboard a Soyuz rocket, joining the four Galileo satellites already in orbit. The launch, on 22nd August, was from Europe’s Spaceport, French Guiana. The definition, development and in-orbit validation phases of the Galileo programme is currently underway by ESA and co-funded by ESA and the EU. – © ESA / J. Huart, 2014

Operations continue smoothly for Galileo Sat 5-6, it has been reported. Both satellites now have both sets of their solar arrays fully deployed and generating power.

The satellites are safely under control, despite having been released on a lower and elliptical orbit instead of the expected circular orbit on 22nd August.

ESA teams are investigating the possibilities of exploiting the satellites to maximum advantage, despite their non-nominal injection orbits and within the limited propulsion capabilities. Different scenarios will then be assessed before decisions are taken for a recovery mission.

Picture reproduced by kind permission of ESA ©

Despite the non-nominal orbit, the satellites are safely under control after they were released from the launcher upper stage and their orbital position was determined by the European ground teams deployed at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, it was reported.

Both satellites continue to be kept in a safe state, correctly pointing to the Sun, properly powered and fully under control of the ESA/CNES integrated team and the teams of OHB deployed at ESA’s control centre In parallel, the teams are investigating possibilities to exploit the satellites to their best despite the non-nominal injection orbit and within the limited propulsion capabilities of the satellites.