"The FAA continues to receive over 100 drone sighting reports every month near U.S. airports (FAA)." - Tom Walker, DroneUp CEO
Security mistakes at airports are costly, sometimes resulting in the loss of lives, millions of dollars of property, and severely damaged airline and airport reputations.
Domestic and international airports need comprehensive, airtight perimeter protection solutions, especially around the runways and terminal zones. In these vital, high-traffic areas, a single intruder (whether it be an errant drone, an on-foot trespasser, or a vehicle) can do immense damage in a small amount of time.
The moment a potential threat crosses into a low-priority prohibited zone, a security incident begins. Airport perimeter security systems need to be able to detect, track, and mitigate all potential perimeter intrusions, even distant ones outside the fenceline, as quickly as possible. Which is a job that requires the right technologies.
Using state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems, especially those including compact surveillance radar, airport security professionals can catch potential breaches long before they reach the fence line and become a viable threat. With the right security software, these systems can even automate and expedite deterrence and mitigation processes and minimize false and nuisance alarms.
Physical security radar systems, like those provided by Spotter Global, do more than provide continuous, 24/7, all-weather monitoring. They integrate seamlessly with PTZ and CCTV cameras, VMS systems, floodlights, sirens, and other perimeter security elements to create site-customized, multi-layered security designs that minimize security incidents and costs.
What Challenges Do Airports Face in Perimeter Security?
Airports encounter significant challenges in perimeter security, primarily due to the limitations of their existing security systems. These are often large legacy systems that struggle to adapt to evolving threats, making it difficult to guarantee comprehensive surveillance and effective security reactions, especially in response to modern threats such as drones.
Legacy security systems can be an Achilles' heel for the safety of any location. Outdated radars and cameras may fail to detect smaller intrusions, such as drones or lone individuals. Lack of effective integration and the mismatch between old and new surveillance technologies can lead to false alarms, coverage gaps, and delayed security responses.
Part of this is a personnel issue. The presence and baseline functionality of legacy systems must never be taken as a reason to sit back and slacken security efforts. Any error that occurred or incident perpetrated under the watch of present management will be present management's responsibility, no matter what kind of system they inherited.
Regular maintenance and system updates, including those that challenge and lead to the replacement of old systems, are crucial to ensure ongoing site safety in a world of advancing and evolving security threats.
Unfortunately, it's not just legacy systems that make the task of securing airports difficult. The vast high-traffic areas of airports complicate the operations of security devices. With so many aircraft, airport personnel, and airline vehicles about, how are security threats to be picked out of the chaos?
Furthermore, constantly evolving threat profiles, the need to balance security with airport functionality and passenger convenience, and environmental factors all complicate and may even lead to security compromises around airports.
What Are Airport Perimeter Security Solutions?
Airport perimeter security solutions are what protect airline passengers, employees, and airport personnel from a myriad of dangers. Runway incursions possibly resulting in aircraft collisions, smuggling, stowaway activity, and theft of baggage or airport materials are all just a few of the potential problems that airport perimeter intrusion detection systems guard against.
How do these systems work? Well, it's more than just erecting perimeter fences and calling it a day.
It starts with ensuring early detection. These systems use various sensors, including radars and long-distance cameras, to identify and track any potential breach of the perimeter before it even reaches the airport property fence line.
Instead of using fence-mounted sensors, the better arrangement is often to mount long-range sensors within the airport property. From there, their surveillance range can reach up to and far beyond the fenceline without putting them within the easy reach of potential saboteurs.
The Powerful Advantage of Customized Alarm Zones
A PIDS (perimeter intrusion detection system) ensures real-time monitoring both inside and outside restricted areas, not just passively monitoring but actively detecting, tracking, and providing verification on targets—it opens up the door for PIDS to do much more than just ensure early detection of potential perimeter breaches.
In combination with the right software, these extended-range radar sensors allow for the creation and continual use of site-customized alarm zones. With low-priority zones out beyond the fenceline, mid-priority zones around property lines and key thresholds, and high-priority zones around crucial assets, these alarm zones are the key to making security dynamic and responsive instead of just reactive.
Especially when the software is further integrated with notification systems, security personnel alarms, and automated deterrence measures (such as floodlights, sirens, HyperSpike Loudspeakers, etc), these alarm zones expedite threat responses. Security teams can pre-define and configure specific system and personnel responses to specific potential threats entering specific areas, such as turning on floodlights if a human intruder enters Zone A, sending a security personnel team if a vehicle enters Zone B, and sending an alert to all nearby pilots if a drone enters Zone F.
In the rare event of multiple simultaneous perimeter breaches, they can help security personnel prioritize threat responses according to the threat level of each target.
For airports, the highest priority alarm zones often cover the areas surrounding terminal buildings, apron areas, runways, and other "airside" sections. When an airport is laid out with the right alarm zones, the penetration of a potential threat into a high alert zone automatically triggers a faster, more intensive security response than is triggered for lower-level threats. Although, ideally, threats never get as far as the high-alert zones because lower-alert zones serve as "buffer" zones that detect approaching threats and automatedly trigger deterrence measures against them so they never even get close enough to high-alert zones to do real harm.
None of this works, of course, without robust and seamless security device integration.
Note that the best results are achieved with dynamic, intuitive interfaces that security personnel can easily operate and navigate behind the scenes. Ensuring operators have access to all the relevant information they need is vital to keeping the human-led side of mitigation active and efficient.
Once fully put together, these mission-critical systems allow security teams to cover and effectively secure massive areas with minimal personnel, minimal resources, and minimal hassle.
What Components Are Involved in Perimeter Security?
Perimeter security involves multiple components to ensure effective site protection. Key elements include:
- Fence: Fences and walls clearly demarcated property lines, providing the site with its most first and most basic level of intrusion deterrence
- Sensors: For high-value properties, the sensor of choice would be all-weather radars coupled with PTZ surveillance cameras.
- Access control systems: Identity-verification technologies, checkpoints, authorization codes, etc.
- Command and Control: Including software programs that integrate, consolidate, record, analyze, filter, and present data from the system's various sensors. Such software may also be used to create alarm zones and automate responses to alarm-zone breaches. Examples include Spotter Global's NetworkedIO™ (NIO™), and a VMS system to record the video feed from the cameras.
- Deterrence Measures: Floodlights, sirens, auditory alarms, communication systems, HyperSpike speaker, security personnel notifications, law enforcement alerts, etc.
The deployment and installation phase of such large-scale security systems must be handled with care to ensure proper integration of all components with the Command and Control software. This guarantees proper functionality and is crucial not to avoid any system or device error that could compromise site security down the road.
Note that some security solutions take days or weeks to fully install, integrate, commission, and test and may require additional infrastructure. Spotter Global radars, with their flexible mounting options, take much less time to install and bring into full operation. Additionally, Spotter Field Service Engineers (FSEs) are available to assist with the installation, integration, and testing processes.
How Does Surveillance Radar Enhance Airport Security?
Spotter Global Surveillance radar can play a crucial role in enhancing airport security by providing real-time monitoring of the airspace and surrounding areas. Their three main advantages over other security sensors are their 1) accuracy, 2) reliability, and 3) force-multiplying integration.
1) The Accuracy of Surveillance Radar
Surveillance radars pick up an incredible variety of data on long-distance targets. By analyzing the azimuth and other radio wave data, radars can immediately determine the size, location, speed, and direction of detected targets even at great distances. All this data, when processed through the advanced software of NetworkedIO™, allows the radar to instantly classify target types, distinguishing the difference between birds and drones, on-foot human threats and foraging wildlife, a crawling human intruder and a tumbleweed, vehicle movement and the movement of wind-tossed tree branches, etc.
2) The Reliability of Surveillance Radar
While many sensors, such as cameras, can suffer in performance due to environmental factors, such as low light, rain, snow, fog, dust, or smoke, ruggedized surveillance radars remain largely unaffected. They monitor continuously and reliably through all weather conditions.
Spotter Global radars even meet IP67 standards for water penetration resistance in high spray/rainfall environments.
3) The Force-Multiplying Integration Capacities of Surveillance Radar
The reliable wide-area surveillance abilities of radar allow them to track targets carefully and precisely. When paired with the right software, this ability can be used to exert a force-multiplying effect across an entire security system. The integration of other perimeter security sensors and security devices with radar and radar software enables crucial security system advantages including:
- The automatic cueing of PTZ cameras to the location of radar-detect targets, enabling the full recording of security incidents to support mitigation efforts and subsequent legal proceedings
- The automatic detection and tracking of threats
- The accurate filtering of nuisance alarms, even when camera views are obscured by environmental conditions
- The combination of all threat detection data into one, easy-to-read user interface makes real-time situational awareness easy for decision-makers even when they work remotely
- The creation of custom alarm zones optimized to respond to particular target types in particular areas at particular times with particular responses, allowing the security system to work with the schedule of the site to maximize site security
- The custom preparation of automated alerts, deterrence measures, and other responses that are triggered only when specific target types enter specific alarm zones under specific conditions
Integration & Versatility Advantage of Spotter Global
Spotter Global Radar offers several advantages over other technologies. Apart from the aforementioned ability to operate effectively in various weather conditions, Spotter Global radars boast one of the widest integration partner lists in the worldwide security industry and have proven their reliability over 15 years in a wide variety of environments, from military bases and large critical infrastructure sites to small private residential properties and mobile military applications.
The Best Spotter Global Radar Model for Airports
One radar model that may be of particular interest to airport security teams is the Spotter Global C1200. This radar has the longest range offered by Spotter Global and, like all Spotter radars, can track multiple targets simultaneously. This makes the C1200 ideal for aviation environment security, maritime environment security, and similar applications. The Spotter Global C1200 radar can track human targets at a minimum distance of 1500 m and vehicle targets at a minimum distance of 2000 m.
Finally, the C1200, like all Spotter Global C Series radars, operates off of a secure military X-band, ensuring low susceptibility to electronic interference and consistent performance in complex electronic environments such as airports.
How Is Technology Evolving to Meet Security Needs?
In today's digital landscape, technology is rapidly evolving to address growing security needs. Innovations such as advanced encryption, biometric authentication, and AI-driven threat detection systems are integrating with every type of security sensor and enhancing both physical security and cybersecurity efforts around the globe.
What Are the Future Trends in Airport Perimeter Security?
Future trends in airport perimeter security will increasingly focus on advanced technology, including AI-driven surveillance systems, more sophisticated video analytics, and integrated sensor networks. These innovations will further enhance situational awareness and real-time threat detection.
Spotter Global's NetworkedIO (NIO) will soon incorporate another software element, video AI, into its Command and Control operations to detect and track threats with even greater efficiency.
Conclusion
Airports and critical infrastructure sites require the very best security available for the sake of passenger and airline staff safety as well as for the nation's economy and overall safety. With diligent oversight and the best security technologies, airports can keep up with the latest security threats and maintain smooth and safe operations for all involved in and affected by airport operations.