LRIT Or Long Range Identification and Tracking

Long Range Identification and Tracking

• All passanger ship to carry LRIT.

• Mandatory for all ship more than 300 GT on International Voyage and 500 GT on coastal voyage shall be fitted with LRIT.

Purpose - Security of the Coastal State

Every Coastal State has got a right to have position information as well as Track the movement of any ship which is with in 1000 NM from its own coastline.

So came in the concept of LRIT, it is for the security of the Flag or Coastal States.

No new equipment fitted onboard the ship, existing SATCOM-C terminal it self behaves as LRIT terminal.

That SATCOM-C terminal shall be ON 24×7, so that it will respond to the Flag state query. Flag state will send the message to every of its ship which is carry LRIT equipment at a fixed regular time interval.

On receipt of the particular query or a poll call from a Flag State every LRIT terminal will respond back and send automatically to the Flag state 3 basic information-

• Identity of the ship

• Position of the ship

• UTC date and time of position

This information is picked up by the Flag State at a regular intervals for every 6 hours.

This time interval can be reduced and increased.

If Reduced - Two successive pickup every 15 minute

Circumstances to reduced :-

• If the Flag state wants to reduce the time interval. 

• Request made by the Company because they suspect some danger to their own fleet or vessel.

• Request made by the Coastal State because they want to monitor the movement of the ship which is within 1000 NM from their coastline.

• Request received from the Master of the vessel through its company to monitor his ship because he suspect that the vessel security is being compromised or may be comprised.

If Increased - The time interval between two successive poll calls can be increased and can be as high as once every 24 hours.

• When the vessel is in dry dock 

• When the vessel is going to be laid up for prolonged time ( No employment, No cargo)

Information is picked up from the ship by the Communication Service Provider (CSP)