Application

Border and high-altitude surveillance

Persistent watch over ground that is too high, too cold and too large to hold with people alone.

The problem

A line of posts on a high ridge can see a great deal and still miss the approach that matters. The ground is vast, the weather closes the observation window for days at a time, and at four thousand metres an aircraft that performs well on a plain may not leave the ground at all. What is needed is height, endurance and the ability to identify what has been detected, all from a launch point that is a patch of rock.

How it runs

A typical deployment

01
Launch from the post
The aircraft lifts vertically from unprepared ground beside the position, with no runway, launcher or prepared site.
02
Hold the sector
It transitions to wing-borne flight and flies a standing pattern over the assigned sector, with the stabilised day and thermal payload searching.
03
Identify, do not just detect
Onboard detection flags movement; long optical zoom and the rangefinder turn a contact at distance into an identification with a position.
04
Everyone sees the same thing
The track is published into the awareness picture on every handset and at the command post, carried over the mesh where there is no network.
05
Recover and turn round
The aircraft returns to the post, lands vertically on the same patch of ground, and is ready again after a battery change.