Spanish UAV Unit PASI achieves significant operational milestones in the month of July.
Searcher MK III
The relatively unknown Spanish UAV Unit, PASI (Autonomous Intel Sensors Platform in the Spanish acronym) has completed this month of July, the mission number 500, in support of ISAF in the RC-West Area of Responsibility.
The Unit operates the UAV Searcher MK-IIIJ, a small but very efficient and versatile UAS (Unmanned Air System). The first one of the Unit´s three Coys was deployed in Camp Arena at FSB Herat (Afghanistan) in 2008.
The “Armadillo” as it is better known, operates normally, night missions monitoring extended areas in the provinces of Herat and Badghis, where the Spanish PRT contingent is deployed.
On the other hand, on July 18, 2012 the UAV training unit completed successfully “the 8th Flight Operators Course” in FSB HERAT. This course aims at qualifying pilots to be fully operational in the model, after having completed the academics phase, basic flight training phase, and simulator training phase.
The special added value of this course is that the pilots are instructed in the intelligence and operations TTPs, (Tactics, Techniques and procedures) in an operational environment gaining both technical and tactical qualifications in a real life operation.
In these four years of continuous operation, the Armadillo has flown more than 500 missions over Afghanistan. The “eye in the sky” has spent almost 2.500 hours, day and night, protecting ISAF troops and facilities in RC-WEST and HERAT FSB.
