‘Super radar’ to focus on small boats smuggling migrants to UK

Border Force explores how new technology could identify and track craft as they cross English Channel

BORDER Force is planning to use a super radar to stop organised criminal gangs smuggling migrants from Calais to British shores aboard small boats.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the Home Office is exploring how new highly sensitive radar technology could be deployed to identify and track fast moving boats so they can be intercepted as they cross the English Channel.

A procurement notice from the government department has invited high-tech companies to supply “radar coastal surveillance technology for the detection of small boats, mainly rigid hulled inflatable boats (RHIB), approaching the shoreline on the Kent coast”.

The equipment would need to have a range of up to 10 miles to spot incoming small vessels heading towards the Kent coastline.

The notice says: “Organised crime syndicates are constantly generating different ways to illegally land illegal migrants or prohibited and restricted items into the UK.”

It says that in 2016, Border Force “reacted to a step change” in RHIB landings across the South East coastline, with migrants being “dropped off ” by boats understood to be getting smaller.

The document also reveals the favourite routes used by organised gangs and the seaside towns where migrants are most likely to land.

It adds: “Although the teams carry out surveillance on over 150 miles of coastline, the shortest routes from the Boulogne/Calais area towards Kingsdown, Deal, Dover and Folkestone appear to be the favourite routing for organised crime.

“To tackle this criminal activity, Border Force is looking to procure radar coastal surveillance equipment to enable officers to identify incoming targets.” The move underlines how new and emerging technology is being seen as key to defending UK borders.

Smaller crafts, particularly wooden or fibreglass boats, are more difficult for radar to detect, especially if moving at speed. Although metal engines should be picked up by radar, they are often positioned low enough in the water to go undetected.

And it is feared that people smugglers are removing any fitted radar reflectors, designed to make the boat more visible to avoid collision, from RHIBs to make them even harder to spot.

The Government is exploring the possibility that a super radar could be mobile, making it easier to be deployed quickly and respond to new routes

‘The shortest routes from the Boulogne/Calais area appear to be the favourite routing for organised crime’

being used on than 20 miles.

Meanwhile, Border Force officers would need to be able to “view live [radar] activity from remote locations.”

The people-smuggling gangs have repeatedly put migrants’ lives at risk in increasingly audacious and dangerous Channel crossing attempts.

Earlier this year a six-man gang, which included Albanian gangsters, was jailed after using four boats to cross the Channel to Kent. However, the RHIBs got into trouble and began to sink, leaving the desperate migrants, including children who had each paid £6,000, texting relatives saying they were drowning. After the RNLI rescued them, it is understood the gang began looking at using three-man jet skis as a new method to make the crossing.

The National Crime Agency had been monitoring the gang and placed a bug aboard the boat and used other surveillance equipment which showed the methods they were using. the crossing