Portuguese Tekever has delivered several shipborne AR3 NET RAY unmanned Aerial System to the Nigeria Navy as part of the Deep Blue Project in collaboration with the Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, (NIMASA).
The Tekever AR3 UAS were delivered on 16 December, at the Apapa Dockyard in Lagos. It was partially disassembled and shipped in several crates. Officers of the Nigerian Navy and Customs were on-hand to inspect the shipment for proper documentation.
Tekever’s AR3 is a shipborne surveillance UAS which can support multiple types of land and maritime mission including; ISTAR, pollution monitoring, border protection, communication relay, and infrastructure surveillance.
It can be launched and retrieved from small vessels, providing an easily deployable range extender for maritime platforms.
“Because of its endurance of more than 10 hours, its a perfect fit to support both maritime and medium range land missions”, said Ricardo Mendes, TEKEVER COO, “and, with an extra payload capacity and the integration of a maritime radar, our goal is to provide customers with unprecedented capabilities in a very small and affordable package. We’re still testing these new capabilities, but we’re very happy with the results we’re getting”.
The latest version, the TEKEVER’s AR3 NET RAY UAS has a 8kg payload capacity, an increase of 33% over the legacy model. It provides customers with the option to carry a 25Nm range maritime radar.
AR3 NET RAY Technical data
Dimensions
- Wingspan: 320 cm
- Length: 140 cm
- Weight (Empty): 14 kg
- MTOW: 22 kg
Performance
- Endurance: +10 h
- Operational Range: 120 km (64 NM)
- Cruising speed: 120 km/h
- Maximum Speed: 140 km/h
- Launch Catapult
- Recovery Parachute or net
- Operation Modes Autonomous or assisted
Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project which is funded by the Ministry of Transport, and has already deployed its integrated maritime security infrastructure.
Deep Blue Project would drastically reduce piracy and other crimes within Nigeria’s maritime domain and the Gulf of Guinea.
Several of the essential component of the Project are have been integrated, since May this year, the first batch of 16 armoured personnel carriers have been supplied by Proforce Defence.
Procurement is handled by Israeli firm HLSI-Blue Octagon, and will see the acquisition of several land, sea and aerial based platforms including two special mission naval vessels manufactured by Shipyard de Hoop, 17 fast interceptor boats delivered by De Haas Maasluis, two Leonardo AW 109 helicopters and two Cessna Citation Jet CJ3 type ISR (intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance) aircraft that will be equipped by Bird Aerosystems.