Aurélien Fleurot / Photo credit: BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
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12:02 p.m., September 02, 2023
Security around the Rugby World Cup, which begins next Friday, will be scrutinized, particularly with a view to the Paris-2024 Olympic Games which will take place next summer. Among the innovations in place for this World Cup, Thalès has imagined an anti-drone device to secure the sky around the stadiums.
Securely detect, classify and neutralize drones, including the smallest ones. These are the missions of the “Parade” system, designed by Thalès, which will be deployed around the Rugby World Cup stadiums. Security will be one of the major challenges of this great sporting event, which begins this Friday, less than a year from the Paris-2024 Olympic Games.
“On the ‘Parade’ system, we have fitted a latest-generation radar, so we will always know if there is a potential threat in the area that needs to be monitored and protected. This radar has an instrumented range of five kilometers” , says Therry Bon, head of anti-drone solutions at Thalès.
A simple and effective device
Last March, the Air Force took advantage of the Six Nations Tournament match between the XV of France and Wales to discreetly test the device, which is intended to be simple and effective. “The intelligent system will say: ‘It is such frequency’ (that we apply) and the operator, who has the frequency, knows where the threatening drone is and only has to make the decision to press on the ‘Jamming’ button. The drone will therefore no longer receive a signal from its pilot. Either it will land or it will return to a pre-programmed point. So it will cancel its mission, if it was really a threatening drone”, illustrates Thierry Bon.
While the number of drones in France has been multiplied by six in the space of five years, 200 hours of surveillance have been scheduled during the Rugby World Cup.