The Finnish Border Guard continues to monitor the Finnish sea areas from air with support of EMSA

The European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) is supporting The Finnish Border Guard with an unmanned aircraft system (RPAS – Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) during the sailing season of 2025 in coast guard functions. This EMSA air operation extends also to Estonia and Latvia.

The RPAS system is Tekever AR5 which is based in Hanko Finland for the duration of operations. The Finnish Border Guard’s previous RPAS-operation with EMSA was carried out in summer 2024.

The main goal of the Finnish Border Guard’s operation is to improve the capacity in tasks relating to safety at the sea and border security, as well as in other coast guard functions in the Finnish sea area, coast and archipelago. The operation helps to form a better situational awareness concerning the open sea areas.  In addition to surveillance tasks, the aim is to detect possible illegal oil discharges a, assist in maritime search and rescue and support the monitoring of cross-border-crime. The operation also improves the Finnish Border Guard’s preparedness for marine pollution response. 

Coast guard functions are a broad European concept, which includes maritime safety, maritime security measures, maritime search and rescue, fisheries control, customs surveillance, general law enforcement, border surveillance as well as protection of marine environment. The capacity of the EMSA’s RPAS is widely used in all these tasks, either directly by the Finnish Border Guard or when assisting other authorities.

The operational focus is on the aforementioned coast guard functions on the northern Baltic Sea, mainly outside the archipelago. The West Finland Coast Guard District and the Gulf of Finland Coast Guard District plan the flights to be a part of their own operations, and the flights carried out in the Finnish airspace are led from the West Finland Coast Guard District’s command center. 

Similar RPAS operations provided by EMSA have been conducted several years in a row and deliver additional value to the maritime domain awareness over the area of operations. The information delivered by the RPAS improves the coast guard districts’ maritime situation picture, contributing to a more efficient use and allocation of other on-scene assets. It is valuable for the Finnish Border Guard to have access to the said capacity, and to be able to further cooperation with EMSA and other countries participating in the operation.

The remote-controlled fixed-wing aircraft can operate in the air for several hours, on a broad operating area. 

RPAS air operations are carried out with Tekever AR5 systems. The remote-controlled fixed-wing aircraft has dimensions of 7,3-meter wingspan and length of 4,0 meters. It can operate in the air for extended period of time and with satellite communications, which provides a broad operating area.

The aircraft is particularly tailored to maritime surveillance operations, including monitoring discharges from vessels, and enhancing the maritime situation picture in heavy vessel traffic sea areas like the Baltic Sea.