The BORDERUAS project promised to “combine for the first time a lighter-than-air UAV with sophisticated surveillance technology”. The aim is “to facilitate effective border surveillance and prevent cross-border criminal activities by supporting search & rescue applications, specifically rough terrain detection.” Ambitiously, BORDERUAS aims at more broadly “improving the protection of European societies.”
In terms of technological outputs, specific objectives of the BORDERUAS project include the development of “UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System, ed.) components to support low cost and long duration border surveillance operations”, and of “sensors and data processing /fusion/interpretation methods to support detection and tracking in difficult terrain, extreme weather conditions and unstructured environments.”
More specifically, “The project will combine for the first time a multi-role lighter-than-air (LTA) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with an ultra-high resolution multi-sensor surveillance payload” which “will include synthetic aperture radar (SAR), laser detection and ranging (LADAR), shortwave/longwave infrared (SWIR/LWIR) and acoustic cameras for landscape mapping, as well as optical and hyperspectral cameras for indirect detection (via vegetation disturbance)”. BORDERUAS also promises to exploit “the ground-based infrastructure of border police units (command & control centres), innovative data models (to identify irregular crossing patterns and preferred routes) and advanced audio/video analytics and storage (to provide additional detection capabilities).”
The use of SFCW (Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave, ed.) radars “to detect moving people and vehicles” through “microwave images of the scene” is also featured.
Lastly, an ADD-C3 (a web-based Surveillance Command, Control and Coordination, ed.) “integrated solution for enriched situation awareness for surveillance border security” is described.
A “synergy” with the ODYSSEUS project was announced in May 2024.
This adds to other synergies with FOLDOUT, ROBORDER, METICOS (through which BORDERUAS became part of the BES Cluster, a cluster of EU-funded projects in Border External Security — BES — initiated and led by METICOS to spur cross-project collaborations, and more specifically “support each other, identify solutions to upcoming challenges, secure effective dissemination and valuable exploitation potentials”, ed.), EFFECTOR, NESTOR, PROMENADE, MELCHIOR, and ODYSSEUS H2020 (https://borderuas.eu/synergies/).
Newsletter #8 writes: “Given the nature of the project as a Research & Innovation Action with an important validation / demonstration component, the consortium does not aim to redevelop novel technologies completely from scratch, but instead, to use existing technologies, improve them and combine them into an innovative and integrated border control solution.”
According to the project’s website, the “technology concepts” developed within BORDERUAS “will be validated in the field by 5 border police units (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine) covering 3 major irregular migration routes into Europe (Eastern Mediterranean, Western Balkan and Eastern Borders Routes), which represent 58% of all irregular border crossings detected and are also the most used for smuggling of drugs, weapons and stolen vehicles”. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the consequent exit of a Belarusian entity from the Consortium, the Ukraine pilot was moved to Croatia.
More precisely, in the end “The validation will be through 3 trials in controlled environment and their reports. The first pilot trial will take place at the HSF partner premises in Croatia. The second one at the Romanian border involving accordingly the border police units from Moldavia and Romania. The third one at the Hellenic and Bulgarian border involving the respective border police units”.
Results are unknown at the time of writing, but the page claims that “Based on the field trial results, the consortium expects to develop a solution that can be deployed further by European border police after the project completion”.
It is interesting to note that the second field trial took place in March 2024, and the post detailing it was published in May 2024. Also, the third field trial only happened in May 2024 (as detailed in a June 2024 news item). And yet, the project was supposed to end on November 2023. Was the project extended? Apparently so, as its Cordis page now indicates May 31, 2024 as the end date for the project. Why? When? No public explanation could be found for this at the time of writing.
Also noticeable is that in Newsletter #9, published in January 2024, the Consortium wrote about “The project having faced a critical time period the past six months”. Yet, it “managed to revise and amend the use of the UAV by focusing mainly on the different components of sensors, cameras, and data analytics tools to achieve a delivery of a payload suitable for a robust UAS monitoring approach.” It is not clear what the Consortium is referring to here. Possibly some kind of critical issue with a UAV it was developing?
No final deliverable concerning ethics is public at the time of writing. Furthermore, the official BORDERUAS website features no deliverables at all, whereas its Cordis page only features five public deliverables.
We did request the disclosure of the Data Protection Impact Assessment (D7.10) and several ethics-related deliverables (D10.1-D10.9) to the Research Executive Agency, but we were only provided redacted versions of these documents.
Also, and importantly, none of them was actually available in a final version. On the contrary, replied the REA, “some of the (partially) disclosed documents were “still subject to review and approval of REA” at the time of the reply.” In fact, argued the EU Commission agency, “the partially disclosed documents were received by REA from the coordinator of the project. They are disclosed to you for information only, without the right to reproduce or exploit and they do not reflect the position of REA and cannot be quoted as such”.
It’d be difficult anyway, as the redactions are extensive. For example, Section 3 of the DPIA is entirely blacked out, including in the Table of Contents, whereas in D10.3 almost half of the conclusions summary is blacked out. A section of the Table of Contents was redacted from D10.8 as well.
Crucial details concerning the suitability of mitigation measures (D7.10), the identification of dual use items (D10.2 and D10.4) and both the identities and background information on the nominated members of the Ethics Advisory Board (D10.8) are blacked out.
Several details on the tech being developed are also lacking, as D1.3 — on the “Multi-sensor framework” — is the only technical deliverable available to the public.
When we were able to identify some broad technical details, these were framed in a solutionist perspective. The clearest example concerns the ADD-C3 solution, justified with this securitarian, totalizing perspective: “Nowadays, one of the most important aspects of European Countries is the need to adopt systems and solutions for guarding their territory against illegal activities such as smuggling, and terrorism demands and also for dealing with incidents of irregular migration. Such systems include reliable long-range threat detection and prevention technology that can operate anytime during the day and regardless of the weather conditions. Thus, border security and surveillance are a 24/7 operation that can’t afford downtime or periods of reduced readiness. The increased migratory pressures in Europe and the economy behind illegal activities, highlight the limitations of traditional surveillance and control centers to satisfy the needs and requirements of modern border control systems for homeland protection.”
No public details could be found on the respect of dual use and privacy regulations — even though we can read that “The Project necessarily uses a significant amount of personal data in order to function”, and even that “Depending on the level of identification of the individual this data may also become classified as biometric data.”
Similarly, concerns for human rights are included in a blog post but not detailed in public deliverables, at least at the time of writing (months after project completion anyway, ed.). It is therefore difficult to understand if and how these concerns were translated into actual mitigation strategies. This is all the more concerning given that an unredacted section of D10.3, which we managed to obtain in a redacted form, states that “The nature of the Project per se gives rise to the possibility of impinging upon data subject’s fundamental rights and freedoms, alongside the curtailing of civil rights and liberties. This risk is exacerbated further due to the large-scale geographical areas which are to be monitored. Hence”, writes the deliverable, “stringent safeguards become necessary in order to safeguard the above-mentioned rights and freedoms”. And yet, these are still shrouded from public view.
Results of the tests are also not public.
The project however features a specific page dedicated to explaining the notion of “dual use” technologies, and in particular “Dual-use concerns in research and EU-funded projects”. In it, it argues: “Although BorderUAS research activities and outcomes exclusively focus on civil applications, the legal team of the project based on the above-mentioned Council Regulation ((EC) 428/2009, ed.) to conduct an exhaustive study in order to meet the EC requirements on dual-use concerns in research outcomes of the project. One of the main objectives of the project is constantly to ensure that BorderUAS research is compliant with all applicable national, European and international dual-use legislation.”
As a final note, it is interesting to highlight that, before leaving it as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the State Border Committee of the Republic of Belarus was included in the BORDERUAS Consortium. This effectively means that the EU had funded the development of a solution to “combine for the first time a lighter-than-air UAV with sophisticated surveillance technology” together with Belarus, which was of course a dictatorship even before Vladimir Putin’s imperialist aggression.
