Arrow Towers deployed ‘behind the scenes’ at Farnborough Airshow to reveal enhanced airspace situational consciousness
A brand new “Detect and Keep away from” (DAA) platform which identifies and tracks drones and different plane, introduced one other dimension of security and safety to final week’s Farnborough Worldwide Airshow.
The Arrow ground-based DAA, deployed in partnership by NATS Providers, the industrial arm of the UK’s main air site visitors companies firm and Altitude Angel, the world’s most trusted UTM (Unified Visitors Administration) expertise supplier, repeatedly monitored the airspace, notably plane working at decrease ranges.
Decrease-level site visitors might be tough to trace utilizing conventional radar techniques, and Arrow has been developed by Altitude Angel to make sure security of all customers by detecting authorised and unauthorised site visitors – together with drones. It’s making ‘flying beneath the radar’ a factor of the previous.
Authorities on the present had real-time entry to the info gathered by the Arrow towers; NATS and Altitude Angel had been capable of reveal the aptitude of the expertise.
Richard Ellis, NATS Head of New Airspace Customers, mentioned: “A pop up service like this one is a good instance of how security might be achieved in very complicated environments the place non-cooperative drone exercise can have an actual impression on an airshow. It’s a privilege to have the ability to reveal the aptitude of the Arrow expertise with the authorities at a premier occasion reminiscent of Farnborough Airshow.”
Richard Parker, CEO of Altitude Angel, added: “Working alongside Farnborough Worldwide and NATS Providers over the course of a really busy airshow is nice validation of the efficiency – and vary – of the sensor and software program applied sciences we’ve developed. The Airshow is a really busy airspace setting, attended by crowds of lots of of 1000’s; our Arrow towers, deployed in only a matter of hours, demonstrated a capability to supply important intelligence to the authorities, a service that may assist to safeguard very complicated occasions.”
The Arrow functionality, deployed within the Airshow grounds, collected information from a deployment of road-towable mast-based sensors to create a view of lower-level airspace inside Farnborough Airport’s flight restricted zone (FRZ) and past. The infrastructure was utterly self-sufficient, together with technology of its personal (photo voltaic) energy and a non-public communications community, solely requiring minimal area from the Airshow organisers. This image included real-time visibility of non-electronically conspicuous plane and drones, these which don’t carry conventional transponders, fused right into a single airspace image.
Alex Culley, NATS GM Farnborough Airport, mentioned: “Our focus throughout the airshow is to make sure a secure occasion for guests and members and minimal disruption to our neighbouring airspace customers. We’d like a strong and complete view of all site visitors shifting out and in of the airshow and new expertise options might help improve security, safety, and operational effectivity inside the airspace.”
In March 2024, NATS and Altitude Angel fashioned a strategic partnership to allow aggressive and progressive companies to combine new airspace customers, whereas sustaining secure operations for its current industrial aviation prospects. The partnership may also speed up the roll-out of ARROW expertise, which when fused with Altitude Angel’s GuardianUTM platform, detects and identifies all airspace customers, enabling drones to fly BVLOS and share the airspace with crewed aviation safely and securely.
About NATS
NATS is the UK’s principal air navigation companies supplier and is cut up into two primary companies, which give two distinct companies:
- NATS (En Route) plc (NERL) — the regulated enterprise, which offers air site visitors administration companies to plane inside UK airspace and over the jap a part of the North Atlantic; and
- NATS (Providers) Ltd (NSL) — the unregulated enterprise, which offers air site visitors management companies at lots of the UK’s main airports (15 civil and seven navy airfields) and different airports abroad.
NATS offers UTM, aerodrome, information, engineering, capability, effectivity and environmental efficiency options to prospects worldwide, together with airports, airways, air site visitors service suppliers and governments.
About Altitude Angel
Altitude Angel is an award-winning supplier of UTM (Unified Visitors Administration) software program, enabling these planning to function, or develop, UTM/U-Area options to shortly combine sturdy information and companies with minimal effort.
As we speak, Altitude Angel’s market-defining expertise is offering a vital, enabling service on which the way forward for UTM will probably be constructed throughout the globe. Altitude Angel has been main a consortium of companies to construct and develop a ‘drone superhighway’ connecting airspace above Studying, Oxford, Coventry, and Rugby. The SKYWAY superhighway community, enabled utilizing Altitude Angel’s patented Arrow® expertise, will unlock the massive potential supplied by unmanned aerial automobiles and be a catalyst to allow progress within the city air mobility business.
Altitude Angel’s first social gathering options additionally energy a number of the world’s main ANSPs, aviation authorities and Enterprises, together with NATS (Providers) Ltd (UK), LVNL (Netherlands) and Avinor (Norway), empowering them with new capabilities to securely handle and combine drone site visitors into nationwide operations.
By unlocking the potential of drones and serving to nationwide aviation authorities, ANSPs, builders and enterprise organisations, Altitude Angel is establishing new companies to assist the expansion within the drone business.
Altitude Angel was based by Richard Parker in 2014 and is headquartered in Studying, UK.
Altitude Angel’s developer platform is open and accessible to all at https://builders.altitudeangel.com
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