Yáñez Gómez Spanish Navy: "The RPAS sector is developing at an amazing speed"

The head of the Spanish Navy’s 11th Aircraft Wing, Lieutenant Commander Santiago Juan Yáñez Gómez, on Thursday will take part at the UNVEX S&D roundtable discussion analyzing the operational experience with RPAS in all military branches. While attending the drone fair being hosted by the northwestern Spanish city of León, the Navy’s chief officer responsible for the use of RPAS talked to Infodefensa.com about the missions that the drones perform within Spain’s naval force.

What are RPAS’ main uses in the Navy?

The Navy mainly employs RPAS for ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) tasks. Basically, our mission is to provide tactical information in real time via high-resolution images over a long period of time. This information is of great help to the command when it comes to decision-making, as well as to the units themselves, either as a baseline for the planning stages or as a security element during the mission’s execution. In practice, we’ve carried out this mission at sea during Operation Atalanta, and on the ground in our support mission in Iraq.

How are the systems used on land and at sea?

At sea, our system is used as a complement to the vessel in search, localization and identification operations, for example when it comes to pirate groups threatening maritime traffic. On land, we survey the area, the routes and zones of interest, we support planning, we locate and identify targets and provide security to the multinational Special Ops groups deployed in the area.

Which new needs have been detected that these systems could cover?

Their possibilities are almost infinite. It’s a sector that is developing at an amazing speed, and every day, new things appear that further widen the scope of uses RPAS offer. We’ve recently been testing an optical system for maritime search operations, which is completely passive, that allows us to locate a shipwrecked person isolated in a large area in a matter of minutes. Using the connection with autonomous submarine vessels, it could be a very powerful tool in anti-submarine warfare or as a communications relay for the submarines themselves.

And for civilian use?

As to civilian applications, we’ve been recently seeing how our colleagues in the Australian Navy use these systems for support at their strategic infrastructures (oil and gas pipelines) by detecting via a specific software any leak or spillage in expansive areas that are hard to access. Until now, they needed months of work and large investments in personnel and material for this. These are only some examples of these systems’ huge capabilities. Every day, as I’ve mentioned, many more are discovered.