BOULOGNE-BILLANCOURT, France, Oct. 20 (UPI) — The Patroller long-endurance drone by Sagem performed successfully in recent homeland security tests held in Portugal as part of a European Commission project.
The French company said that in the AIRBEAM project, Patroller was operated as part of a response coordination and control unit in full-scale simulations of missions such as intrusion, convoying, surveillance of high-value sites, fire surveillance and more.
The test was conducted in civil airspace from the Beja Air Base and was controlled by Sagem in scenarios defined by the Portuguese National Guard and Air Force.
“The Patroller’s overall performance and advanced imaging system provides very high resolution images to identify and precisely locate threats and risks,” Sagem said. “It has also demonstrated an ability to be deployed at short notice, plus operational flexibility and security.”
AIRBEAM is a project, within the scope of the EC’s FP7/Security program to develop a management system for large-scale crises and to validate the system through operational demonstrations.
AIRBEAM calls on the operation of several intelligence platforms — unmanned aerial systems, balloons, satellites — to meet these goals, with information processed in real time by a coordination unit.
Patroller is a modularly designed unmanned aerial system. It can carry a multi-sensor payload of as much as 551 pounds. Its endurance is more than 20 hours of flight.
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