The NBS project is the first part of the Saudi Border Guard Development Program, 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 bin Isa al Khalifa of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
At the ceremony, as reported in various international media, King Abdullah inaugurated the NBS project through an interactive-screen, which relayed a video of the technological deployment at the Northern Borders. In the video, the preparation for of which was supported by our in-situ project team in KSA, the Commander of the Northern Region thanked the King for implementing his vision of a secure Saudi Arabia and outlined the operational advantages of NBS. Later, Prince Mohammed presented the benefits and enhancements the project has brought to the borders.
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,” he said.
The NBS project, enabled by Airbus Defence and Space and its civil works partner, is a fully-integrated technological security-solution encompassing 900 km of the border with Iraq. It consists of 1 sand berm, 3 fences, 7 Command & Control (C2) Centers, 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 centers, the National HQ and the Ministry of Interior over 1,45 million km of fiber-optic cables. These assets, combined, provide superior operational awareness and means to mitigate and monitor threats of all nature.
