Belgium: “SkeyDrone, DronePort Sint-Truiden Launch National Drone Detection and Testing Centre”

Skey­Drone, a joint ven­ture between Brus­sels Air­port and Bel­gian Air Nav­i­ga­tion provider, Skeyes, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with DronePort Sint-Tru­iden to estab­lish the first per­ma­nent Nation­al hub at the for­mer Brustern Air Base, where man­u­fac­tur­ers can test, val­i­date and demon­strate drone oper­a­tions, reports a press release.

It is esti­mat­ed that over 100,000 drone flights take place in Bel­gium each year, with only a small pro­por­tion offi­cial­ly autho­rised and com­pli­ant.

Skey­Drone also plans to oper­ate a nation­al detec­tion net­work, pro­vid­ing real time mon­i­tor­ing and alert­ing ser­vices that already sup­port air­ports, ener­gy facil­i­ties, pris­ons, off­shore wind farms and sev­er­al police zones.

This is because drones, as they become cheap­er, ore sophis­ti­cat­ed and acces­si­ble to use, the craft can be exploit­ed for mali­cious activ­i­ties such as smug­gling con­tra­band in to pris­ons, con­duct­ing espi­onage over sen­si­tive sites, dis­rupt­ing air­port oper­a­tions or car­ry­ing haz­ardous pay­loads.

Hen­drik-Jan Van Der Gucht, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Skey­Drone, com­ment­ed,  “By lever­ag­ing DronePort’s oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment and inte­grat­ing it with our nation­al detec­tion back­bone, we’re not only enhanc­ing our ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties, but also fos­ter­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment where indus­try, gov­ern­ment, and defence can co-cre­ate the future of air­space secu­ri­ty.”

Hen­drik-Jan Van Der Gucht

Ward Decaluwé, CEO of DronePort Sint-Tru­iden, added, “With this By com­bin­ing our unique infra­struc­ture with SkeyDrone’s exper­tise, we are cre­at­ing an inno­va­tion hub where author­i­ties, tech­nol­o­gy providers, and end users can col­lab­o­rate to address one of today’s most press­ing air­space secu­ri­ty chal­lenges.”

The aim is for DronePort Sint-Tru­iden to pro­vide the phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture for con­tin­u­ous test­ing, demon­stra­tions and stake­hold­er col­lab­o­ra­tion, as well as open­ing its facil­i­ties to a wide range of par­ties devel­op­ing both C‑UAS sys­tems and advanced drone tech­nolo­gies.

While Skey­Drone is to enable the tech­ni­cal inte­gra­tion of the var­i­ous sub­sys­tems, man­age the inter­faces with civ­il avi­a­tion stake­hold­ers, safe­guard com­pli­ance with reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and con­nect par­tic­i­pat­ing solu­tions to its exist­ing detec­tion net­work.  

The hope is that the col­lab­o­ra­tion will estab­lish Bel­gium as a Nation­al Test­bed for C‑UAS inno­va­tion; accel­er­ate time-to-mar­ket for Bel­gian and Euro­pean tech­nol­o­gy providers; strength­en Belgium’s tech­no­log­i­cal sov­er­eign­ty in C‑UAS capa­bil­i­ties; offer defence and civ­il author­i­ties a trust­ed plat­form for eval­u­at­ing and select­ing inte­grat­ed solu­tions; and posi­tion Bel­gium as a “Euro­pean Ref­er­ence Cen­tre” for drone detec­tion and non-kinet­ic counter-drone tech­nolo­gies.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.skeydrone.aero

https://droneport.eu

(Top image: CGI of future test cen­tre)

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