Primary Radar can detect illegal aircraft

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The Ministry of Civil Aviation, Indra Systems, and COCESNA signed a contract for the acquisition of a primary radar on Friday, January 17, 2020. The $12 million radar system will work in conjunction with the country’s secondary radar to detect any movement in our airspace, whether the vessel has their transponder turned on or off. Quite often, air vessels carrying drugs and other illicit substances enter our airspace and go undetected but with this primary radar, that will be a thing of the past. It will provide the capability of surveilling the entirety of our airspace in real-time.
Director of Civil Aviation, Lindsay Garbutt, says that it will provide the necessary support to our airspace, proving greater air and national security both in Belize and the region. It will allow for the safety of pilots and passengers who make up the more than 200,000 movements experienced in Belize annually. Director Garbutt also says that the radar will be able to guide pilots around inclement weather conditions, something our secondary radar is incapable of doing. It will also have the capacity to interconnect with the rest of Central America.
This radar is “cutting edge” technology, only afforded to us through the partnership with Indra Systems and COCESNA. Indra is an information technology and defenses systems and COCESNA, the regional body responsible for the provision of air navigation services in Central America and of which Belize is a part, allowed Belize to acquire the radar two years before we were supposed to. It is only through successful negotiations with both organizations that we were able to afford the provision of the radar. Director Garbutt says that acquiring this primary radar now sets us along with the international aviation community in terms of the technology and equipment we will now have.
Along with the Department of Civil Aviation, the Belize Defense Force (BDF), the Belize Police Department (BPD), and the Joint Intelligence Operations Center (JIOC) will receive real-time information from the radar. Again, this will allow for greater response to vessels possibly carrying illicit cargo. It is expected that this primary radar will be up and running before or by August or September.