ISJ hears from Simonas Mikuzis, Security Segment Leader and Product Manager, Navtech Radar.
From protest activity to runway safety, airports face pressure to detect and respond to unauthorised movement across complex and open environments.
Understanding how different technologies are used to address this challenge is key to building effective and resilient airside security.
The global context of airport incursions
Airport incursions are not a new concern, but their nature and recurrence have shifted in recent years.
Alongside traditional risks such as runway incursions, perimeter breaches and wildlife hazards, airports are increasingly exposed to deliberate, highly disruptive forms of unauthorised access.
Protest activity has become one of the most prominent examples. In several widely reported cases, small groups have gained access to airside areas, damaged assets or occupied areas, causing disproportionate operational disruption.
What makes these incidents particularly challenging is not their scale, but their impact.
A single individual or a group of them can trigger runway closures, delays and travel diversions, while also placing themselves and airport personnel at risk. For airport operators, the issue is not only whether an incursion can be stopped, but how quickly it can be detected, understood and acted upon before it escalates.
Airports are uniquely exposed to this risk. They combine wide-open spaces, long perimeters, multiple access points and constant movement of people and vehicles.
Security teams must differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate activity across large areas, often in challenging weather or lighting conditions, while maintaining compliance with regulatory frameworks.
In this context, perimeter-focused thinking alone is increasingly stretched. Detecting that a fence has been crossed is important, but it does not provide a complete operational picture.
Once an individual or vehicle is inside the airside environment, the priority shifts to understanding where they are, where they are moving and how best to coordinate a response.
Assessing the technology landscape
Most airports rely on a layered approach to airside security, combining physical barriers, procedures and tech. Each element plays a key role but has limitations when deployed in isolation.
Fencing and physical barriers remain fundamental to perimeter protection. They act as a deterrent and define controlled areas, but they are not designed to provide continuous awareness across airside. Fences can be climbed, cut or breached and perimeter alarms do not indicate what happens next.
Fixed cameras and video analytics are widely used to support monitoring and investigation.
They provide visual verification and evidential value, but their effectiveness depends on coverage, lighting and weather conditions. Open areas require large numbers of cameras, increasing infrastructure, maintenance and operational complexity.
Analytics can help, but false alerts and missed detections remain a concern, particularly in low-visibility conditions.
Access control systems and procedures are essential for managing authorised movement, yet they are less effective at detecting unauthorised activity once access points are bypassed or misused.
Patrols add a valuable human layer, but they are resource-intensive and cannot provide continuous coverage across large sites.
The common challenge across these approaches is fragmentation. Alerts are often isolated, contextual information is limited and operators are required to interpret events under time pressure.
As threat profiles evolve, airports are increasingly looking for technologies that provide early detection and sustained awareness, rather than point-based alarms.
Radar as part of an integrated airside security solution
Radar addresses many of these challenges by offering a fundamentally different way of monitoring the airside environment.
Instead of relying on fixed lines or static fields of view, radar provides continuous detection and tracking across wide areas, regardless of weather or lighting conditions.
Radar systems can be designed in different ways, and this has a direct impact on how much of the airside environment can be covered by a single sensor. Flat panel radar typically monitors a defined sector, making it well suited to specific areas or approaches.
In contrast, 360-degree rotating radar continuously scans the full surrounding area, allowing one sensor to cover a larger airside footprint.
This coverage means fewer sensors are needed to maintain awareness across open environments, while still providing accurate information on the location, speed and direction of movement.
By detecting and tracking movement in real-time, radar enables airports to maintain awareness of people and vehicles across airside, not just at the perimeter.
This is particularly valuable in low-visibility conditions such as fog, heavy rain or darkness, where cameras and human observation are limited.
Movement is detected in real-time, allowing operators to see where an individual is, how they are moving and whether their behaviour requires intervention.
Radar becomes more effective when integrated with existing systems, including VMS platforms, cameras and PSIM environments already in use at airports.
When movement is detected, cameras can be automatically directed to the relevant location to provide visual verification without the need for manual searching, while the event is recorded within the VMS for later review.
This coordinated approach supports faster decision-making and reduces operator workload at critical moments.
The value of rotating radar extends beyond security alone. The same data used to detect unauthorised movement can support multiple airport functions. Operations teams can gain visibility of vehicle movements on aprons and service roads. Safety teams can use radar to support runway incursion monitoring.
Because the same system supports multiple airport functions, the investment can be shared across departments rather than justified by security alone.
From an infrastructure perspective, 360-degree radar also simplifies how airside security systems are designed and deployed. Radar sensors require power and communications; system design typically starts by making use of infrastructure that already exists across the airside, rather than driving new civil works.
This allows coverage to be planned around available assets such as lighting masts, buildings or established utility routes, keeping installation disruption and cost low.
Large areas can be covered with a relatively small number of sensors. In practice, a typical one-runway regional airport can achieve full airside coverage using as few as two to three radar sensors.
This reduces reliance on dense camera networks and the associated civil works, simplifying installation and ongoing maintenance while maintaining consistent situational awareness regardless of weather or lighting conditions.
For airport decision-makers, this broader value proposition matters. Investment in new detection technology must be justified not only on security grounds, but in terms of operational resilience, efficiency and long-term sustainability.
Systems that deliver benefits across multiple teams are more likely to be supported internally and at board level, and quicker to adopt across day-to-day airport operations.
As airports continue to adapt to a changing threat landscape, security needs are moving away from standalone technologies towards those that provide a shared, real-time understanding of what is happening across airside.
The ability to see, track and understand activity in real-time is becoming a critical capability. Radar, used as part of a wider system, plays a central role in making that possible.
To read this article in the February 2026 edition of ISJ, click here.
