During a recent European exercise, Lockheed Martin demonstrated advanced border surveillance capabilities from an optionally piloted vehicle. Lockheed Martin and its team showcased how traditional defence focused integrated airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities can be quickly adapted to address dynamic border protection as well as maritime search and rescue needs.

Frontex, tasked to strengthen the security of the European Union external borders, hosted the exercise to view existing capabilities in a live environment. The primary goal of the exercise was to evaluate how optionally piloted vehicles or unmanned vehicles can further enhance border surveillance in the maritime domain. Lockheed Martin demonstrated how quickly optionally piloted vehicles could collect intelligence on suspicious activity or detect boats in distress, then immediately send imagery, streaming video and other gathered intelligence to a ground station.

“Lockheed Martin presented an affordable, integrated solution tailored to address specific European border management requirements,” said Jim Quinn, Vice President of C4ISR Systems Lockheed Martin IS&GS-Defense. “We demonstrated how ISR tools can be rapidly deployed, while maintaining linkage to existing infrastructure.”

Using a Diamond airborne sensing aircraft equipped with a FLIR electro-optical/infrared camera and a robust communications suite, the aircraft collected high definition video and imagery over several flights. Captured information was then transmitted to a ground system via both line of sight and beyond line of sight communications, providing users on the ground with better situational understanding and broader knowledge of the immediate environment. In near real-time, ground station analysts were able to view the data, then update situational awareness displays for all users in the enterprise. Lockheed Martin’s team also demonstrated how to share situational awareness pictures with a wide range of display technologies, ranging from computers to hand-held devices.