An important milestone was reached for the Maritime Surveillance Network III (MARSUR III) on 26 June 2024 as it marked the deployment phase of the network following the approval of the User Acceptance Test (UAT) results by the 16 contributing Member States (BE, BG, CY, DE, EL, ES, FI, FR, IE, IT, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO, SE) at the last Project Arrangement Board hosted by the EDA. The UAT, hosted by the European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen) on 4 June 2024, is a technology development phase in which the network and its software were tested in the real world by its intended users. The test environment used for the MARSUR UAT consisted of 3 real nodes with synchronised software running on national servers located in SatCen, Italy and Cyprus and connected via the MARSUR network.
The success of the User Acceptance Test was witnessed by the MARSUR Technical Arrangement Board members from the 16 contributing Member States and MARSUR community representatives from 21 European Navies, both in person and remotely via a VTC connection. All tests outlined in the approved User Acceptance Test Plan & Use Case Scenarios of real maritime track and information exchanges were fully and correctly executed, demonstrating the robustness and resilience of the MARSUR network. This was an important milestone in a long and successful history that dates back to 2005, when EDA defence ministers asked the agency to create a maritime network using existing naval and maritime information sharing systems in the EU. Following the EDA Cat B projects MARSUR I and II, this latest EDA Cat B project MARSUR III was launched in December 2020 and will run until 2026, successfully fighting the obsolescence and technical problems of its predecessors.
16 contributing Member States now have an effective system for developing European Maritime Situational Awareness based on the MARSUR III network, and the deployment phase will provide confidence that the use of the network will increase, making it the tool of choice in the very short term and a capability to be recommended to any maritime commander. The whole MARSUR initiative is one of the many excellent examples of what the Agency’s framework can bring in terms of capability development for our participating Member States.
One of the longest-running projects undertaken by the European Defence Agency (EDA), the Maritime Surveillance (MARSUR) project is a technical solution that allows dialog between European maritime information systems. In August 2019 an updated version of the MARSUR Exchange System was agreed and has replaced the previous one. Under the latest EDA project in support of maritime surveillance (MARSUR III) a next-generation technology is being developed, enhancing the capabilities and improving performance. In addition, a “classified layer” is being developed at the level of EU RESTRICTED in a first phase, with a possible future upgrade to EU SECRET, based on the assessment of available budget, operational needs, and limitations.
