Why Full Situational Awareness at Your Military Base is Essential

Complete situational awareness is deemed one of the most critical foundations for collective security. Successful decision-making, and the ability to identify potential threats and dangerous situations relies on it. 

Drone Situational Awareness for Military

In military command, control, and aviation, situational awareness can be the difference between detecting, engaging, and neutralising a potential threat – or being unaware that it’s even there. Whether the threat is a rogue UAV in your airspace or a flock of birds keeping your aircraft grounded, having the ability to see what’s going on in your surroundings and plan for what isn’t, is a vital strategy in staying vigilant and secure at all times.

Recently, a drone completely shut down Latvian airspace when control was lost during a routine flight-test. Nearby airports were forced to close – and the delayed response and lack of resources to efficiently track the drone amounted to three full days of disruption. In April 2019, the Dutch military were also confronted by an unauthorised commercial drone, that was sighted flying dangerously close to nearby aircraft at the Frisian Flag event.

This is significant. If a control team lacks definitive information, data, and insights into the world around them, then they'll be ill-prepared to tackle threats like drones or bird strikes, if, and when they occur.

It's a well known fact that most collisions with birds occur at low altitude, during take-off, and landing. This is a general problem in aviation, but even more so in military aviation. Fighter jets are highly manoeuvrable and often perform low level passes and circuits during training. This increases the chance of incurring bird strikes.

Historically, human observers have formed the basis for surveillance and monitoring at many military bases. While manual observation is not inherently bad, it is ineffective, and lacks sophistication when compared to modern technology like bird and drone detection radar.  

With this in mind, here are three key ways that bird and drone radar can improve situational awareness, and why it’s essential at your military base.

Drone Situational Awareness: Protect Your Aircraft

Most radar systems are great at detecting larger objects like aircraft. However, objects like drones and birds are too small to be picked up, so often go undetected. This is a problem, especially as bird strikes and drone interference can keep aircraft grounded for long periods, or worse, cause problems whilst they're still in the air.

Military aircraft are deployable assets. They are relied on for the success of operations, and if they are unavailable, it can be a nightmare for every military commander. Modern military aircraft are expensive, budgets can often be tight and repairs needed are normally sophisticated. That means stealthy aircraft can take a long time to be brought back into action.

Thankfully, bird and drone detection radar can give you the situational awareness necessary to protect your aircraft from damage. 

With radar tracking, you can monitor the flight paths of bird flocks, individual birds, and drones that enter your airspace. You'll then be able to use the data regarding size, speed, direction, and flight path to plan your flight activities accordingly and prevent unnecessary downtime.

Drone Situational Awareness: Faster Reaction Times for Your Ground Teams

Reaction time can be the difference between a timely resolution and a costly disaster. Your control teams are the first line of defence against bird strikes and drone activity. With a higher level of situational awareness, they can react much faster.

Once information is collected about your surroundings — whether it’s gathered from radar, human observers, or other means of surveillance — it needs to quickly reach and inform your people on the ground.

With manual observation, there will be a delay between detection and reporting, but with bird and drone detection radar it's instant. Radar is advantageous to your teams because, unlike human observers, radar is fast, accurate, and always active.

This gives you the situational awareness to remain alert at all times and provides your teams with additional foresight to react faster to threats.

Drone Situational Awareness: Predict and Neutralise Potential Threats

With data analytics provided from radar technology, you’ll be able to recall, replay, and analyse all recorded data from your radar. This means you can quantify patterns in behaviour and get a better idea of your surroundings, letting you predict bird behaviour and detect, classify, and log drones in your airspace. 

For birds, think tracking of migration routes, seasonal activity, and the impact of specific weather conditions. For drones, you’ll be able to quickly and accurately classify when a drone poses a threat, find its exact location, and relay the information back to ground teams so they can act accordingly. 

Plus, the longer you operate radar, the more useful your data becomes. And this is great for analysing the effectiveness of your own counter-measures and defences.

Drone Situational Awareness for Military: Your Eyes in the Sky

Situational awareness is the backbone of sustained security. It's the key to making smarter decisions about potential threats, and as technology advances, will become more critical than ever. 

Bird and drone radar technology gives you the tactical edge, allowing you to stay ahead.

To see how it can be used to counter threats at your base or airport, check out our guide.