Camcopter S-100 at the 2024 Olympics: French Navy secured the waters off Marseille

With last Sunday's closing ceremony, the 2024 Olympic Games, held this year in France, have come to an end. The French Navy's Camcopter S-100 squadron was also in the thick of the action: the systems from the Austrian company Schiebel secured the waters around Marseille during the Olympic events.

The Camcopter S-100s are stationed with the French Navy's Flotilla 36F in the Var department. Around the Olympic Games, they monitored a total of 22,500 nautical miles (41,670 kilometres). From Saint-Mandrier (Var), the authorities received real-time data from the S-100s on the sea area towards Marseille, venue of numerous sailing, kite and windsurfing events. As a side note, it was not only the Austrian systems that shone there, but also Austria's athletes – with two gold medals, one of them won by the Austrian Armed Forces (Bundesheer) athletes Lara Vadlau and Lukas Mähr, and with three bronze medals, all of which went to Bundesheer athletes.

Camcopter with EO/IR camera and AIS

Lubos Sramek, Director of the French subsidiary Schiebel Aéronaval SAS in Toulon, was pleased: “It is an honour that the French Navy has deployed its S-100 squadron to monitor the surroundings of the Olympic Games. This is another great use case for the Camcopter and demonstrates the versatility of its applications and capabilities.”

For the “Olympic” missions, the S-100s carried a powerful electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) camera and an automatic identification system (AIS). This made it possible to monitor and detect potentially suspicious activity at sea.