Sagem has signed a commercial and industrial collaboration agreement with Egypt’s AOI-Aircraft Factory to meet the requirements of the Egyptian Ministry of Defense.
Under this agreement, AOI-Aircraft Factory will be responsible for handling the final assembly of Sagem’s Patroller surveillance drone system in its Egyptian plants.
In addition, this initiative will include system support and commissioning of the Patroller drone.
As part of this development, AOI-Aircraft Factory will establish a training centre in the country to train staff for the operation and maintenance of the drone systems.
Jointly developed by Sagem and Stemme, Patroller is a remote-controlled medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV, designed for dual-use governmental purpose in support of defence and homeland security missions.
Features of the system include an open, modular design to handle an array of military and security missions and the capacity to carry a multi-sensor payload of up to 250kg.
The system also provides endurance of more than 20 hours, and an operating ceiling of 20,000ft.
The company has already conducted a flight demonstration of the drone with different sensors such as an optronic (electro-optical) pod, radar, electronic warfare (EW) system, distress beacon detector and automatic identification system (AIS) receiver.
The system can be operated either manually from the ground control station or on autonomous mode. The three variants of the surveillance drone system include Patroller-R, Patroller-S and Patroller-M.
In June this year, Sagem signed a contract with the Egyptian Ministry of Defense’s arms authority to deliver armement air-sol modulaire (AASM) Hammer air-to-ground missiles for the country’s air force.
The new contract covered all three versions of the AASM Hammer such as hybrid inertial / GPS guidance, inertial / GPS and terminal infrared guidance, and inertial / GPS plus laser terminal guidance.
Image: Sagem’s Patroller drone offers endurance of more than 20 hours, and an operating ceiling of 20,000ft. Photo: courtesy of Pieter Bastiaans / Safran.
