Police to Monitor Borders with Cutting-edge Reconnaissance Devices

The police will use nearly HUF 4.8 billion in non-refundable subsidies to purchase reconnaissance equipment to be used at the country’s Schengen border sections, the National Police Headquarters (ORFK) announced on police.hu.

The police force intends to purchase state-of-the-art reconnaissance devices and systems mounted on new types of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to supplement the reconnaissance equipment (e.g. fixed and mobile electro-optical surveillance systems) used to monitor Hungary’s Schengen external border sections.

The program will be implemented with a non-reimbursable grant of HUF 4.791 billion (EUR 11.7 million) via the Border Management and Visa Policy Instrument Plus.

They added that the Hungarian Police has already made extensive use of various electro-optical (video and thermal imaging) detection systems to provide technical support for the surveillance of the green border.

According to ORFK, the border surveillance elements form a complex system. The structure of the system in terms of technical support is as follows:

• surveillance and monitoring of large areas, both flat and open, with stable thermal imaging systems
• monitoring by mobile imaging systems of sections of terrain that are partially visible by stable thermal imaging systems due to topography, or partial coverage of the terrain but accessible by vehicle
• monitoring in areas that cannot be monitored by stable and mobile thermal imaging systems, by means of a hand-held thermal imaging camera, live force reinforced by portable night vision devices, and along the Hungarian-Serbian border, by means of the complex border protection system.

They also pointed out that

the combined daylight and thermal imaging camera systems previously installed to provide technical support to border surveillance are in most cases well adapted and contribute significantly to increasing the effectiveness of border surveillance.

The use of UAVs provides a more dynamic surveillance system than before, as these devices allow for different observation positions, facilitating the clear identification of targets, they wrote.

Via police.hu, Featured image: Facebook/Magyar Rendőrség