Teledyne FLIR SIRAS for SWAT Operations

Texas SWAT Team deploys Teledyne FLIR’s SIRAS drone to locate felon: how the “no geofencing” design choice paid off.

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

This past February, the new Teledyne FLIR SIRAS was deployed by a police SWAT team for a felony search in Texas. When a convicted felon escaped into a residential neighborhood, members of the local SWAT team were called out to assist with the search. As a result of the scale of the search area and the nighttime lighting conditions, aerial thermal imaging was decided to be the optimal mode of search.

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In addition to the department’s existing drone, a Teledyne FLIR SIRAS that it was testing was brought to assist due to the capability of its 640x SIRAS payload VUE TV128, featuring a 640×512 sensor and 16MP RGB camera.

When the SIRAS arrived, the existing drone was already set up while its operator attempted to obtain flight authorization. Set up in under a minute, the…