Saudi Border Security Project Inaugurated

King Abdullah ibn Abdilaziz of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia inaugurated the Northern Border Security (NBS) Project on 5 September.

The NBS project is the first part of the Saudi Border Guard Development Programme, commissioned to secure the kingdom’s frontiers. The ceremony was attended by the Minister of Interior Prince Mohammed bin Naif, members of the royal family, various delegates, and also King Hamad ibn Isa al Khalifa of the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Project Director Dietmar Pilz, was in attendance: “I am proud to be responsible of this final stage of the project and to see all our years of hard work and technical know-how finally culminating in this inauguration of our state-of-the art border security system. I would like to thank everyone who has been involved throughout the project.”

The NBS project, enabled by Airbus Defence and Space and its civil works partner, is a fully-integrated technological security-solution encompassing 900 kms of the border with Iraq. It consists of 1 sand berm, 3 fences, 7 Command & Control (C2) Centres, 32 Response Stations, 240 Response Vehicles and 10 Surveillance Reconnaissance Vehicles. Security is enforced through 40 surveillance towers, equipped with Airbus DS TRGS-SEC radars and day/night cameras, and 38 communication towers, all of which are connected to the C2 centres, the National HQ and the Ministry of Interior over 1,45 million km of fibre-optic cables. These assets, combined, provide superior operational awareness and means to mitigate and monitor threats of all nature.