Frontex RPAS Border Surveillance

Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, hires remotely piloted aircraft as a service to watch the EU's external borders, mainly at sea, and stream the data to its headquarters and national authorities. After trials of medium-altitude long-endurance drones in Greece and Italy and a smaller EMSA-provided drone in Portugal in 2018, it awarded framework contracts worth 50 million euro in 2020 to Airbus with Israel Aerospace Industries and to Elbit, paying for flight hours rather than buying aircraft. Airbus reports that its IAI Heron 1 has flown more than 10,000 hours for Frontex from Malta and that it won a second four-year contract in 2025 covering the Central and Eastern Mediterranean from Malta and Crete. Frontex also runs smaller pilots, including a Shield AI V-BAT deployment in Eastern Europe from June 2025 and a shipborne VTOL drone pilot awarded in December 2025.