Fleet and Bases
Headquartered in Adelaide, the company has three operational bases in Cairns, Darwin and Broome. They operate a fleet of six DHC-8-202 and four larger DHC-8-315 'Dash 8s' modified for maritime patrol and surveillance. One further Dash 8 is configured for the LADS contract.
The surveillance aircraft are equipped with Raytheon SeaVue surface search radars with additional Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and Moving target indication (MTI) capability, advanced electro-optical sensors and sophisticated communications suites. They can operate day and night close to land below lowest safe altitude. These aircraft can search an area of 110,000 km² per flight.
A state of the art surveillance information management (SIM) system, able to integrate surveillance and communication and provide real time communications to Customs headquarters in Canberra is due to be installed and operational by October 2008.
Read more about this topic: Surveillance Australia
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