41 Squadron supports the Soccer World Cup
Date: 11 June 2010
By Dean Wingrin
The South African Air Force (SAAF) is required to protect and safeguard the airspace around the 2010 Soccer World Cup venues. Under Operation Kgwele, the SANDF's World Cup support plan, the SAAF has an array of aircraft on duty for the event, including the missile and cannon armed Gripen fighter, cannon-fitted Hawk advanced trainers and gun-toting Rooivalk attack helicopters, supported by the Astra trainer and Oryx and Agusta A109 helicopters.
However, one aircraft is operating quietly over the fan parks and stadiums, keeping an eye out for trouble makers: the Cessna C208 Caravan of 41 Squadron.
The squadron, based at AFB Waterkloof near Centurion, has deployed around the country for Operation Kgwele. The main role of the Caravan is to perform surveillance, reconnaissance, and other observation missions. This is essential to maintain law and order, with thousands of fans congregating at the ten venues across nine South African cities. The key piece of equipment aboard the Caravan is the Carl Zeiss Optronics Argos 410-Z.
To commemorate it's participation in Operation Kgwele, 41 Squadron has applied a special logo to many of its' aircraft, stating that "41 Squadron proudly supports World Cup 2010".
Armscor awarded the then Denel Optronics a contract for the supply of the Argos 410-Z military airborne observation system to the SAAF for its Cessna Caravan aircraft in March 2007. The SAAF had lacked a real-time observation capability with the withdrawal of the Seeker I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the late 1990's.
According to Carl Zeiss Optronics, the Argos 410-Z is a stabilised airborne observation system equipped with the latest generation thermal imager, a 3-CCD daylight TV camera with powerful zoom lens, eye-safe laser rangefinder, autotracker, and mission awareness positioning system (MAPS). The MAPS function provides the operator with GPS coordinates of "objects of interest" by means of a high accuracy integrated inertial measurement unit (IMU).
Built to military specifications, the Argos 410-Z offers day and night images. The thermal imager offers four fields of view and advanced image processing features, including edge enhancement, local adaptive dynamic compression and electronic zoom.
The Caravan is equipped with an onboard operator station which is data linked to a ground station, providing the operations centre with a real-time imagery.
