Broome base for $1b customs coastwatch contract

Broome will be one of the bases for a billion dollar twelve-year Australian Customs Service contract for civil aerial maritime surveillance of the Australian coast.

Surveillance Australia, a division of Adelaide based National Air Support has won the contract to provide the service until 2020.
The contract covers surveillance from Broome through to Cairns.
The aircraft will operate from existing Surveillance Australia bases in Broome, Darwin, Horn Island and Cairns, providing all weather, day and night electronic surveillance of Australia's maritime Exclusive Economic Zone.

Each aircraft will be capable of searching an area of more than 110,000 km2 per flight.

Surveillance Australia first secured the contract off then incumbent Skywest Airlines in 1995 under the direction and impetus of NAS sister company's Perth-based National Jet Systems GM business development Hugh Davin.
To fulfill the wider "all electronic surveillance" Coastwatch requirement from January 2008, National Air Support will upgrade its five existing twin-turbo prop Dash8s and add five more, for a total fleet of six Dash8-200 Series and four larger and longer range Dash8-300 series. All aircraft will feature new generation surveillance sensors, communications and data management systems.
The new system combines new-generation surveillance sensors and advanced satellite communications systems with highly reliable long range aircraft.
Each aircraft will act as a live link in a national data communications chain with Coastwatch receiving a stream of high quality surveillance information in real time.