The Turkish Ministry of Interior’s Integrated Border Management Project Directorate which takes part in the “End-User Advisory Board” of the TALOS Project undertook an important role in reflecting Turkey’s Border Security needs into the TALOS project.

The works for the project were launched by an international consortium including ASELSAN and STM representing Turkey in “partner” capacity in the thematic area of “security” in EU FP 7; the kick-off meeting for the project took place in the Polish Capital of Warsaw on 12 June 2008 with the participation of project consortium members composed of representatives of 14 companies from 10 countries. The project duration will be four years, with a budget of 20 Million Euros; 13 million Euros of the budget will be funded by the European Commission. ASELSAN’s share in the project workload will be 17.4%, and STM’s share will be 10.6%, bringing Turkey’s total workload share in this critically important work package to 28%.

The Polish Industrial Research Institute PIAP will be the project coordinator, whereas the Israeli company IAI will undertake the technical management, and ASELSAN the C4ISR System Engineering. Apart from Turkey, the project consortium, which includes ASELSAN and STM, also includes Poland, Israel, Finland, France, Estonia, Romania, Belgium and Greece.

The project, which will aim to produce a system for reconnaissance and surveillance in uncontrolled borders and wide areas, has two critical work packages: “Top Level System Architecture Design” and “Development of Command Control Sub-systems”. These two critical packages will be carried out under the leadership of ASELSAN. STM will also assume an important duty in these two packages, under which together with ASELSAN it will compile the system requirements, determine the top-level system architecture and participate in the design activities to be carried out.

It is apparent that the TALOS project, which will be completed in 2012, carries a great significance for its end-users, i.e. the governmental bodies responsible for border control in European countries. When the project is activated, it is expected that a huge development will be ensured in border security through supervision and management of data and images sent from unmanned land vehicles, unmanned aircrafts, sensors and cameras at command control centers, resulting in meeting the demands at the highest level.