Laser Airborne Depth Sounder Flight RAN

The Laser Airborne Depth Sounder (LADS) Flight is a unit of the Royal Australian Navy. Unlike the rest of the flying units of the RAN, it is not controlled by the Fleet Air Arm from HMAS Albatross (air station), but instead falls under the operational control of the Australian Hydrographic Service at HMAS Cairns (naval base), providing a platform for the operation of the Laser airborne depth sounder system.

History
In the 1970s, the Royal Australian Navy's Hydrographic Service was still limited in its ability to survey the vastness of Australia's coastal waters, and was still producing charts on areas where surveying was incomplete or had not even taken place. As a consequence, the RAN began to search for a way of effectively surveying the Australian coastline from the air, which led to the development of the Laser Airborn Depth Sounder system by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, a part of the Australian Department of Defence, with trials beginning in 1977. In 1992, a new unit was formed to operate the system, the Laser Airborn Depth Sounder Flight, with the LADS system fitted to a highly modified Fokker F27 aircraft. This aircraft was subsequently replaced in 2009 by a modified Bombardier Dash 8.

Operation
The LADS Flight is a joint operation between the Australian Hydrographic Service and the Fugro LADS Corporation, part of Fugro a Dutch corporation, which also runs hydrographic operations for the private sector. The aircraft itself is owned by the Royal Australian Navy, which also provides the system operators, while the flight crew, technicians and aircraft engineers come from the civilian contractor. The flight is stationed at Cairns in the far north of Queensland, but can be deployed to other locations for up to three months at a time; the aircraft has an operational endurance of up to seven hours for operations close to its base, reducing to four hours on station at a distance of up to 300 nautical miles.