Naval Forces spoke with Jim Parrott about Chess Dynamics‘ perspective in the field of electro-optics and fire control. Jim has been appointed Naval Sales Manager in November 2024. He served as a Royal Navy warfare officer for over 33 years where he specialised in surface warfare and air defence, predominantly serving in destroyers and aircraft carriers. His most recent roles within the Royal Navy included working as a NATO advisor in the Middle East, as well as at the UK Permanent Joint Headquarters managing UK current operations in the Indo-Asia Pacific.
Naval Forces: Chess Dynamics is quite active in the field of electro-optics (EO) & fire control (FC) and a viable partner for naval/maritime customers around the globe. What is on offer to adequately detect, track and counter unmanned aircraft (drones) in the unpredictive naval/maritime security environment?
Jim Parrott: Our maritime systems, known as the SeaEagle family, are able to be cued by a platform’s existing radar and electronic warfare systems or to conduct optical scanning along a known threat vector.
The SeaEagle family includes the next generation naval fire control systems, SeaEagle FCEO-D (Fire Control Electro-Optical Digital) and SeaEagle FCRO (Fire Control Radar Optical) – and the SeaEagle EOSS-D (Electro-Optical Surveillance System Digital), a modular system providing 24-hour passive surveillance and target identification. This capability is powered by the newly upgraded Cobra platform, designed to meet the growing surveillance and targeting demands of today’s complex, multi-domain threat environment.
These innovative capabilities feature state-of-the-art image processing and video tracking, known asVision4ce Deep Embedded Feature Tracking. This, coupled with our ability to track at high frame rates provides the most robust performance even on highly dynamic threats, such as drones, allowing stable and consistent tracking in the most challenging of scenarios.
Naval Forces: Can you provide a glimpse of what sort of technology is utilised in the design of the next generation of FC and EO systems? Is AI (artificial intelligence) – used in the form of advanced AI algorithms for the process of high-quality detection, identification and tracking – a challenge?
Jim Parrott: The tracking algorithms developed by Chess Dynamics feature in our Vision4ce product line and utilise machine learning throughout the target presentation. This allows the video tracker to adapt from its programmed tracking library to “learn” throughout the engagement. As AI continues to evolve, we are investing in research & Development [R&D] to further expand system performance to ease the operator workload and cognitive burden as far as possible.
Naval Forces: When we are talking about the drone threat, what is Chess Dynamics answer to counter drone swarms? The coordinated use of drones – as a reconnaissance drone or effector (‘kamikaze’ drone) – should be considered in any concept for upgrading or modernising naval/maritime fleets.
Jim Parrott: The challenge in all forms of warfare has often been for an attacker to defeat the defensive solutions that their opponent is fielding, and this is as true when dealing with drones as it was in the time of Nelson. By ensuring that adequate surveillance and FC systems are fielded to enable rapid target detection, recognition [and] tracking of drones, the operator has a choice of a range of hard and soft-kill effectors to engage the priority targets. Chess Dynamic’s latest [SeaEagle] FCRO couples a highly accurate FC radar with our advanced optical sensor suite to ensure maximum options for a ship’s command team to mitigate threats.
Naval Forces: What are the key challenges toward the end of the 2020s for Chess Dynamics when designing, manufacturing, qualifying, validating and testing new product solutions?
Jim Parrott: The pace at which drone technology is advancing is the key challenge to any manufacturer of counter-UAS systems. This necessitates continual R&D in sensors, video tracking and image processing to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge of technology when dealing with a rapidly evolving threat in challenging times.