The Sentinel IDS® Expeditionary Trailer is designed to safeguard a wide range of assets with a waterside approach, be that ocean, lake, river or reservoir. These range from sprawling commercial ports and critical national infrastructure, to remote naval bases and private residences. Built upon a field-proven military platform known for its robustness and reliability in demanding environments, the trailer’s self-contained design allows personnel to quickly establish an underwater threat detection perimeter, in off-grid locations lacking local infrastructure.

Sentinel is the world’s most deployed Intruder Detection Sonar, trusted to protect vessels and facilities from underwater threats. These threats include uncrewed underwater vehicle attacks and divers attempting to access a site, potentially concealing explosives or contraband. Sentinel employs a combination of simultaneous active and passive sonar techniques to monitor underwater environments, detecting, classifying and tracking potential threats at ranges of up to 1,500 metres for drones and 1,000 metres for divers, depending on local conditions. Patented software algorithms intelligently filter out a wide range of marine elements, including debris, fish, and mammals. This ensures a significant reduction in false alarms, enabling security teams to concentrate on legitimate alerts.

The launch of the Sentinel Expeditionary Trailer marks a significant advancement in mobile site security, offering users an all-in-one solution that can be towed to a location, set up, and begin monitoring the underwater domain in as little as 20 minutes. The trailer is equipped with onboard batteries and generator, air conditioning (cooling and heating), wireless mesh network communications and Sentinel command and control, processing, storage and wiring. It provides a small crew all the necessary resources to operate autonomously in remote and challenging locations for extended periods regardless of the ambient temperature.

Recognising that large sites often require extensive coverage, Sentinel IDS is frequently employed in networked configurations with multiple sonar heads deployed on the seafloor. The Expeditionary Trailer seamlessly supports this capability with a telescopic communications mast, enabling up to 10 trailers to be connected into a mesh network. Once networked any trailer can act as the master controller displaying all Sentinel information or securely connected back to a central command and control location. The mast also offers additional hardware options, including high-resolution cameras, floodlights, and loudhailers, creating a comprehensive, multi-layered security solution.

The trailer can be operated in three ways; attended mode by a person using the onboard monitor and keyboard, locally using the supplied rugged laptop and 100m cable either for convenience or covertness or finally unattended where after setup the trailer is left unattended communicating wirelessly to other trailers or a dedicated command position.

“The ability to rapidly deploy a robust and scalable underwater surveillance system to protect ports, energy infrastructure and industrial sites is essential in today’s heightened security environment,” said Simon Goldsworthy, Global Business Development Manager at Wavefront. “The Expeditionary Trailer provides that capability, offering superior, ‘go-anywhere’ and uninterrupted protection. It’s another example of Wavefront listening to our customer needs and supplying relevant and world-leading products.”