A400M det to Coastal Command?

[NutLoose]

It appears we have put out a contract to trial a drone and it may be in use now.

https://www.contractsfinder.service....rchResults&p=1

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-d...nglish-channel

At 9.59pm on December 9, an aircraft appeared over the English Channel. On aviation website FlightAware, the flight popped up suddenly, already airborne at 240 metres. In neon green, the flight-tracking website showed an apparently muddled path, tracing a scribble alongside the coastline between Dover and the village of Camber before landing at Lydd Airport in Kent around four hours later.

FlightAware labelled the flight under the tail number G-TEKV, a code that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) database registers as a “fixed-wing landplane (unmanned)”. Aka: a drone.
The flight took place four days after the BBC revealed unmanned aircraft would be flying from Lydd Airport to monitor people attempting to cross the channel from France by boat, a phenomenon that was declared a “major incident” in December 2018 by Sajid Javid, when he was home secretary. Since then, the number of migrant crossings has continued to rise. In 2019, at least 1,892 people had arrived in Kent and Sussex in small boats, according to research by the BBC. Another 1,235 attempting the journey were intercepted by authorities in France.

A spokesperson for the CAA said drones should not appear on flight trackers, but could not explain G-TEKV’s presence on the site. The Home Office said it has access to aerial surveillance, and works with partner agencies to make use of available assets. A spokesperson declined to comment on what company manufactures the drone based at Lydd, citing commercial sensitivities.

• CAA records show the unmanned aircraft flying with the tail number G-TEKV is the 7.3m x 4.0m AR5 model manufactured by the Portuguese IT, defense and aerospace group Tekever. In the UK, G-TEKV is registered to Tekever’s office in the University of Southampton’s Science Park. (Incidentally, the company was visited by local MP Caroline Nokes in August 2018, when she was immigration minister).

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/engl...igrants-drones

The UK is spending big on migrant-tracking drones to surveil the seas

As media attention around the arrival of small groups of migrants on dinghies reaches fever pitch, a government contract offers a glimpse of the future

The UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) awarded an Israeli defence company with a contract worth almost £1 million to demonstrate and develop unmanned aerial vehicles – or drones – to enhance coastal surveillance operations.

Elbit Systems UK, a subsidiary of Haifa-based Elbit Systems, was awarded the £990,000 contract in February 2020, but the contract summary was only published on a government website in July.
According to the Invitation to Tender, the MCA was looking to “assess the potential use of UAV to augment current and future aerial surveillance capability by reducing, enhancing or replacing existing delivery methods”. The contractor that secured the deal would have to work out and implement a flying programme to showcase how drones could be deployed in various scenarios – including search for missing people or vessels, surveillance, and search for a missing person both on the ground and at sea.

The UK has grown increasingly keen on using drones to keep watch on its coasts, as media attention around the arrival of small groups of migrants on dinghies on British coasts has reached fever pitch. The home secretary Priti Patel has called on France and the rest of the European Union to make sure that migrants do not try to sail to the UK.
In January 2020, WIRED reported that a surveillance drone belonging to Portuguese company Tekever – which had recently signed a contract with the UK Ministry of Defence – was hovering for hours over the English Channel, in what appeared to be a patrolling operation.
Back then the Home Office declined to comment on the details of the operation, but stressed that the UK was working with France and other countries and resorting to technologies including drones to stem illegal crossings. Over the last few days, Tekever’s drone has kept flying twice a day over the English Channel, according to data by Flightradar24, a website that collects information about aircraft traffic. On one occasion, on August 4, Tekever’s drone criss-crossed the sea between Dover and Calais for over 21 hours.

More of this might be coming soon, since the MCA has made it clear that it plans to add more unmanned vehicles to its fleet, according to a BBC report from May 2020. That goes beyond the Elbit System programme. A tweet sent out from the Agency’s Twitter account on July 31 showed a MCA-liveried surveillance dronedesigned by Austrian company Schiebel flittering over North Wales in what the post described as “an operational evaluation”.