[defenseindustrydaily.com] Mexico
needs surveillance, and many of its key surveillance assets are coming
from Israel. Its E-2C Hawkeye AWACS aircraft were bought used from the
Israeli Air Force. A recent $25 million purchase
from Elbit Systems added cheaper long-endurance aerial surveillance via
Hermes 450 mid-tier UAVs, as well as hand-launched Skylark-I mini-UAVs
for troops on the ground. Now Aeronautics Defense Systems of Yavneh,
Israel will be selling Mexico’s federal police over $22 million worth
of its Skystar 300 surveillance aerostats and small Orbiter UAVs.
These
UAVs and aerostats will be needed. Mexico doesn’t make the headlines
very often, but the country faces what counter-terrorist analyst John
Robb has called a growing “open source insurgency” of narco-traffickers and some leftist groups. The violence associated with “The Cartel War” has reportedly claimed almost 8,000 lives in the last 2 years. It is starting to create ripples of concern
in many American Hispanic communities, who still have considerable
family ties in Mexico. It also appears to be prodding the Mexican
government into belated force improvements, as the scope of the growing
conflict becomes clearer.
The Skystar 300
is a tethered aerostat attached to a mobile trailer, not a powered
blimp. Its 30 kg payload includes sophisticated and stabilized
day/night cameras that can zoom in on targets of interest, while
offering geo-tracking that gives precise coordinates for anything it
observes. The aerostat deploys in 20 minutes and can stay aloft at
about 1,000 feet for 72 hours, giving it about a 60 km/ 36 mile
surveillance radius. A 10-minute helium refill is all the craft needs,
before being sent back up.
The Orbiter
is described as a “mini-UAV”, but it sits at the high end of that
category. Orbiter UAVs are catapult-launched, which ties them to
vehicles. They land using a parachute and airbag. Endurance is 3 hours,
and its operating radius is up to 40 km. Both are high figures for its
category, and its ability to operate up to 18,000 feet is currently unique.
A September 2008 teaming agreement
between Textron’s AAI and Aeronatucs DS gave AAI an offering that sits
below its popular Shadow 200 tactical UAV, and made AAI the lead for
Orbiter marketing activities in the USA. This would include any
including “foreign military sales” back to Israel, which could be
bought using American aid dollars from a manufacturing line in Hunt
Valley, MD. The announcement said that this teaming agreement and
manufacturing provisos could be extended to “other countries to be
mutually agreed in the future”; it is not known if Mexico falls into
that category.
Source: http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Mexico-Adds-More-Israeli-Surveillance-Platforms-05291/
