The Answer

The US Government has spent millions of dollars developing sophisticated technologies for use on US warships to prevent successful attacks by terrorists or other adversaries. The systems are installed on most ships in the US fleet and are proving their effectiveness almost daily.

The Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) of The Pennsylvania State University is a leading research and development facility for such technologies. Of particular relevance, the ARL developed intelligent controller technologies that are used for creating autonomous systems as well as advanced decision support systems.

WatchStander, aware of the impact piracy was having on the commercial marine industry, believed that some of the advanced technologies developed at ARL could be modified and adapted to provide a significant advance in counter-piracy capability.

In 2011, WatchStander obtained a globally exclusive license from ARL to adapt these technologies to provide defense for seagoing commercial vessels, thus leveraging the millions of dollars already invested internally and by the US Government. This meant WatchStander was able to complete these adaptations very rapidly and cost effectively.

WatchStander is the result. Any vessel fitted with WatchStander is correspondingly more secure from pirate attack than unprotected vessels.

WatchStander strips would be attackers of the element of surprise, and then employs non-lethal countermeasure combinations in the proportional application of escalating force to encourage attacks to be broken off.