The aim of the development is to place an unmanned
aircraft on the market for the very competitive price of less than
6 million euros per unit. “The system will offer 12 hours of
flying time without touching down, high-performance maritime reconnaissance
and search and rescue capabilities, and unbeatable operating and maintenance
costs," said the company's general manager Pérez-Pujazón.
Indra initially developed the P2006T MRI as a low-cost
airport surveillance solution based on a light manned aircraft, designed
to complement coastal reconnaissance systems which, like the Integrated
External Surveillance System (SIVE) in the Spanish case, have been
deployed by different countries to protect and guard their maritime
borders.
Coastal maritime reconnaissance systems offer effective
cover of the area between the coastline and a 20 or 30-mile radius.
However, the economic interests of coastal countries extend beyond
this radius up to the boundaries of the maritime exclusion zone situated
200 miles from the coastline or, as the case may be, up to the halfway
point between the coasts of two countries when the distance between
them is less than 400 nautical miles.
This is the case of the Mediterranean Sea, in which
the distances between coastlines belonging to different countries
often form part of maritime exclusion zones situated within a radius
of 50 to 80 miles.
An intelligent aircraft at an affordable price
Coastal reconnaissance systems alone are insufficient
to monitor these areas efficiently, respond to the issue of illegal
immigration and address the humanitarian crises it provokes. Aerial
or ground reconnaissance systems are also required.
The P2006T MRI is designed specifically to cover these
areas, and with operating costs significantly lower than those of
traditional maritime reconnaissance aircraft. The miniaturization
and greatly reduced weight of the radar and infrared sensors and automatic
identification systems (AIS) required for the mission mean that they
can be installed on light aircraft designed for low-consumption leisure
aviation.
This is the case of Indra's P2006T MRI which, with
six hours of flying time without touching down in its present version
– the new unmanned system will double that – a fuel consumption
of 32 liters of automotive gasoline per hour of flight and extremely
low maintenance costs, permits the on-board installation and integration
of not only a Seaspray 5000E active electronically scanned array radar
(standard Royal Navy equipment), a high-resolution visible and infrared
camera, and an AIS, but also a line-of-sight radio link with an effective
range of 180 nautical miles and an Inmarsat terminal. This terminal
sends real-time transmissions of the radar signal, visible and infrared
video, AIS data and the aircraft's navigation data to a ground station,
where they are monitored in real time.
The P2006T MRI has been successfully tested by the
Spanish Civil Guard and Frontex in the Indalo operation that is carried
out every summer along the south coast of Spain; in Operation “CLOSEYE”,
recently conducted in the Sicilian Channel; and in the demonstrations
of the European Union's Perseus system carried out in the Alboran
Sea and Aegean Sea. In view of the aircraft's efficiency, the European
agency Frontex recently chose it for future aerial reconnaissance
operations of maritime and land borders.
