Aerial Surveillance Service

The 'Aerial Surveillance Service' contract, valued at 19 million GBP, is a planned procurement by the UK's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on behalf of HM Coastguard (HMCG) to provide intelligence, search, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets for near real-time maritime situational awareness in support of specialized search and rescue operations. This service supplements existing HMCG helicopters and planes under the UKSAR2G contract, which primarily focus on search and rescue, and does not require national coverage but may involve persistent operations during high-risk periods lasting up to 24 hours or longer. The estimated 5-year contract runs from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2031 and adopts a solution-agnostic approach open to various technologies that demonstrably meet the requirements.