Newly Purchased Ultra-Modern Surveillance Aircraft Shows Off Its Capabilities

Last week, the recently acquired Diamond Aircraft DA62 MPP SurveyStar aircraft of the HM Zrínyi Nonprofit Kft. (owned by the Ministry of Defense) performed a cartographic flight in the area of Nyíregyháza (eastern Hungary), lhsn.hu wrote on its social media page, posting photos of the flight.

This means that the professional mapping aircraft, equipped with 21st century airborne remote sensing equipment, a large format digital camera, and an airborne laser scanner, has not only arrived, but is already in operation.

Only a few are aware that this aircraft not only brings back a capability that was lost with the retirement of the An-26, but also provides the Military Mapping Service with new tools that were not available until now, lhsn.hu pointed out. All this creates an opportunity for professionals to develop the State Aerial Photography Capability.

Together with the existing cartographic tools manufactured for additional specialized tasks, the geo-information databases to be created and the map files generated from them will be able to serve the tasks of the Defense Forces and the entire defense sector of Hungary independently,

the military news portal added. One of these tasks is the creation of aerial navigation databases serving the airborne and ground control systems of the Hungarian Defense Forces’ JAS-39 Gripen fighter aircraft, in accordance with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and NATO standards.

As Hungary Today reported, the Defense Forces inaugurated a new Diamond DA62 MPP surveillance aircraft in mid-March. The new aircraft is equipped with state-of-the-art airborne remote sensing sensors (high-resolution digital camera and airborne laser scanner). Compared to previously available technology, spatial data and local data collection, the new capability can deliver 10x resolution, 100x data volume increase, 1000x area coverage.

This represents an order of magnitude improvement in data quality, data production speed, and the ability to provide nationwide coverage with the new data.

State-of-the-art data processing technology can be used to produce new digital cartographic databases, classified datasets, and three-dimensional city models.

The Diamond Aircraft DA62 MPP SurveyStar reportedly costs USD 1.4 million.

Via lhsn.hu, Featured image: lhsn.hu/Horváth Ádám