Airbus Military and fellow EADS subsidiary Cassidian have conducted a large-scale demonstration of technologies to address the growing crisis of economic migration and smuggling on Europe’s maritime borders.
Flying over the Mediterranean Sea, an Airbus Military CN235 of Spain’s Guardia Civil – equipped with a Fully Integrated Tactical System (FITS – detected and tracked suspicious boats and passed the resulting imagery and data in real-time to onshore mission controllers.
Supporting the demonstration, Cassidian’s Atlante Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) showed how UASs can be integrated into a combined surveillance operation by passing simulated data and imagery to ground controllers.
The Atlante operated from Almeria airport in South East Spain – the first time that a UAS has been flown from a civil airport in Europe, demonstrating the platform’s capability to operate in civil airspace and its operational flexibility.
Integrated with information gathered by other assets and shared by multiple nations, the results of the operation help pave the way for a multi-national system to address the illegal migration and criminal maritime activity.
The four-year Perseus program is Europe’s flagship maritime border control.
Bernhard Gerwert, CEO-designate of the new Airbus Defence and Space said: “We are extremely pleased with the technical and operational performance of the CN235, FITS and Atlante which helped ensure the success of this first large scale Perseus demonstration.
