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Two UAS Pilot Competencies, on Land and at Sea

A foundation course in Nairobi ran from 15 to 26 June for 14 officials. An intermediate course in the maritime environment followed in Mombasa from 29 June to 9 July for nine more, joined by five Nairobi graduates for its maritime sessions. Together, the two courses provided a progression from general UAS operator skills to their more specialized application in a maritime environment. Training cohorts were deliberately kept small. Each operator received substantial supervised time at the controls in the morning and theory in the afternoon.

The ten Kenyan entities which participated in the training included the National Police Service, the Ports Authority, the Airports Authority, the Immigration Agency, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior and National Administration, the Kenya Revenue Authority, the Coast Guard Service, the NCTC and the Executive Office of the President. The joint training provided an opportunity to address interoperability gaps as officers, who may in the future have to share imagery, deconflict airspace and coordinate joint responses, learned the same procedures and the terminology together.

Developing Skills for Unmanned Operations in Three Steps

Every participant worked through the practical curriculum individually, under instructor supervision, in three stages.

1. Learning to handle the aircraft as equipment: assembly and disassembly of two UAS models, and the pre-flight and post-flight inspection sequences that every sortie begins and ends with.
2. Building manual flight control, beginning with movement terminology and close-proximity handling, then progressing to intermediate maneuvers, flight modes, and autonomous flight.
3. Operationalization: the final exam contained complete tactical mission scenarios carried out by each participant. Exam tasks included intelligence gathering, infrared sensing and movement beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).

Alongside aircraft operation training, instructors advised participants on field maintenance, equipment care, and data security. Afternoon modules covered national and international air law, regulation of remotely piloted systems in the United Nations, navigation, meteorology, human factors, aeronautical decision-making, aviation safety, night flight, imagery analysis, and UAS threats and counter-UAS technologies.

Operations in the Maritime Environment

In Kenya, ports and maritime security are considered national priorities as the coastline contributes to a significant share of the country's international trade. National authorities have taken steps to strengthen maritime governance, enhance security capabilities, and improve the protection of maritime infrastructure and shipping activities.

The Mombasa training course situated several scenarios over water, with practical exercises conducted at the Port of Mombasa. Operations over water impose distinct demands: visual reference points are limited, reflective surfaces complicate sensor performance, targets of interest are in motion, and an aircraft lost over water is rarely recovered. Participants flew maritime interdiction, search and rescue, maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) scenarios, and were introduced to unmanned underwater systems (UUS) and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technologies through a practical demonstration.