Thales unveils FULMAR

8th February 2012 - 08:54 GMT | by The Shephard News Team

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Thales has unveiled the newest addition to its coastal and maritime border surveillance portfolio with the FULMAR maritime surveillance and identification UAV system. Jointly developed with the Spanish firm Aerovisión, this new solution, with its comprehensive integration of sensors, Command & Control (C2) system and secure communication networks, reinforces the operational efficiency of the coastguard and customs services.

According to the company, the system was developed in order to meet the rising threat posed by illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and terrorist threats to national security. The system allows security services to collect all the information necessary to make the right decisions, in order to coordinate actions as efficiently as possible while optimising the resources.

FULMAR is a long lasting medium-range UAV, a 100% European platform with a unique capability of landing at sea. It considerably improves the operational capacities of the coastguards by enabling rapid and easy detection of new threats.
In this way, Thales is able to propose a complete and modular solution for coastal surveillance and intervention, built around a C2 system and incorporating multiple coastal sensor data, mobile surveillance, communication networks and mobile equipment with intervention capabilities.

The FULMAR UAV is highly reactive, more efficient and has a very attractive operating cost. As soon as the coastal sensors have located potential threats or unidentified elements, it takes just a few minutes to task the UAV from the C2 and send it to the zone in question in order to remove doubt or confirm the threat. This allows the surveillance system operators to classify and identify the elements that have been overflown and to respond with the most appropriate means of action.