As TLY Enerji ve Savunma Sanayi Inc., we are pleased to provide you with detailed information about the MERLIN™ Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar, one of the flagship products of DeTect, Inc.
The Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar is an advanced radar system that plays a vital role in the aviation industry. It has been specifically designed to minimize the risks associated with bird strikes and enhance overall flight safety.
These radar systems are equipped with highly sensitive sensors and advanced software algorithms. By detecting birds along aircraft flight paths and airport approach areas, the system provides timely alerts and guidance to pilots, maximizing flight safety and passenger protection.
Advantages of the Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar
Bird Detection: The system detects birds using advanced radar sensors and identifies potential hazards along aircraft flight paths.
Rapid Response Time: The Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar provides immediate alerts and guidance, enabling pilots to react quickly to potential bird strike risks.
Automatic Flight Path Guidance: The system automatically recommends or supports flight path adjustments in areas with elevated bird strike risk, helping aircraft operate more safely.
Data Recording and Analysis: The radar continuously records and analyzes bird activity, providing valuable information for future risk mitigation and operational planning.
The Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar is widely used at commercial airports, military air bases, aviation operators, and other aviation facilities. It is also employed in industries such as wind energy, where reducing bird strike risks is equally important.
As TLY Enerji ve Savunma Sanayi Inc., we are proud to offer the DeTect MERLIN™ Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar to our customers. For more information, please visit our website or contact our technical team.
We are here to support safer flights and your continued success.
Bird strikes represent a significant safety hazard for aircraft, pilots, and passengers. According to government research, bird strikes cost the military and commercial aviation industries more than USD 2 billion annually due to aircraft damage, aircraft losses, operational delays, and fatalities.
MERLIN™ System
The DeTect MERLIN™ Aircraft Bird Strike Avoidance Radar is the world's first production-model bird strike radar system and remains the most advanced and widely deployed technology available for Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) management, providing real-time detection, tracking, and warning of hazardous bird activity at commercial airports, military airfields, military training areas, and bombing ranges.
With more than 250 MERLIN systems delivered worldwide for aviation safety and environmental applications, MERLIN has proven itself as a reliable, operational technology.
MERLIN has an established record of reducing bird strikes, improving aviation safety, and minimizing aircraft damage and delay costs at both military and commercial airfields.
MERLIN is also the only bird radar system evaluated and approved by the U.S. Government (NASA and the U.S. Air Force) for real-time tactical flight safety applications and the only bird radar approved for installation and operational use in a commercial airport control tower under national aviation safety standards.
MERLIN Technology Features
MERLIN technology offers a comprehensive range of unique features and advantages unavailable in any other system:
Operational, production-proven technology
Real-time bird activity display with the highest available update rates
Precise, tactical, automatic bird strike risk warnings for air traffic controllers and pilots
Mobile, real-time information displays for airport bird control units
Bird detection from ground level to aircraft operational altitudes
Complete 3D airspace coverage and tracking
State-of-the-art solid-state S-band Doppler radar technology
Reliable bird detection in moderate fog, rain, and snow
Military-grade bird detection tracking algorithms with clutter suppression
Real-time target filtering based on bird size and mass to identify hazardous bird activity
Dedicated operating software specifically developed for bird detection and tracking
Simultaneous multi-range operation supporting both Air Traffic Control (ATC) and airport bird control operations
Multi-functional capability for simultaneous bird and drone detection
Complete remote control and real-time information display for multiple users
SQL database system with an automatic daily reporting engine
Complete design, installation, commissioning, and long-term technical support
Comprehensive parts, labor, and performance warranties
Expertise and Resources
With MERLIN, users receive far more than just a bird radar system. Every MERLIN installation is supported by DeTect's specialists in military and commercial aviation safety, air traffic control, airspace management, airport bird control, and radar remote sensing, providing a cost-effective solution that integrates seamlessly and efficiently into airport and airfield operations.
The standard MERLIN system utilizes a dual vertical-scanning and horizontal surveillance radar configuration to provide simultaneous airspace coverage. It delivers dedicated monitoring of critical runways and approach/departure corridors—where more than 85% of bird-aircraft strikes occur—from ground level up to 15,000 ft AGL, while providing 360-degree coverage extending more than 8 miles around the airport.
The MERLIN 3D version provides full three-dimensional target tracking, while the MERLIN 3D+ model delivers the highest level of bird strike risk warning currently available on the market.
MERLIN systems are available in both standard mobile and custom fixed skid-mounted configurations.
For large multi-runway airports and air bases, multiple fixed-mounted sensor packages are networked around the airfield to provide optimum 3D airspace coverage, including dedicated vertical scanning of each runway and its approach and departure corridors. This configuration provides continuous bird strike risk warnings together with precise real-time situational awareness.
Commercial airport installations can be supplied as fixed radar packages mounted on frangible radar towers with compact, environmentally controlled NEMA-rated outdoor enclosures, or with processing equipment remotely installed in a central equipment room located up to 50 miles away. Power and network infrastructure requirements are minimal, and all system components can be fully operated remotely.
MERLIN is scalable and expandable, allowing users to begin with a basic system and add additional sensors as operational requirements and budgets grow. All components are industrial-grade, providing exceptional reliability and low maintenance costs.
Features and Benefits
Within the MERLIN system, hazardous bird target location information is transmitted simultaneously and in real time to multiple local and remote users in operational display formats. User-selectable display options include color-coded symbols, unique identifiers for birds and aircraft, target tracks, target labels, and numerous customizable visualization features.
DeTect's exclusive MERLIN Advisor risk warning software continuously monitors bird activity within runway approach and departure corridors as well as the surrounding airspace. It automatically determines the current bird strike risk for each corridor and displays the information using color-coded text indicating LOW, MEDIUM, or SEVERE risk levels, together with intuitive GREEN, YELLOW, and RED status indicators that can be interpreted quickly within the demanding environment of airport control towers.
Air traffic controllers, airport managers, and bird control personnel are automatically notified of both real-time and predicted changes in risk conditions through user-selectable visual, audible, and text message alerts.
MERLIN Advisor is the only proven and operational automatic bird strike risk monitoring and warning system currently available, representing the latest state-of-the-art technology for real-time bird strike risk management at commercial airports and military airfields.
All target attributes are continuously recorded within the MERLIN SQL database for replay, archiving, and analysis using the integrated Data Analyzer software featuring standard point-and-click queries.
The integrated MERLIN Reporter automatically generates customized or standard BASH management reports at the end of every 24-hour period and distributes them to users via email.
Data can also be exported to GIS and Google Earth, allowing integration with customer planning databases and supporting advanced modeling and detailed analysis.
MERLIN also offers an optional Event Recorder Module capable of storing 48 to 72 hours of complete radar data to support accident and incident investigations.
MERLIN System Advantages
Automatic real-time bird strike risk monitoring, warning, and alerting
User-selectable visual, audible, and messaging alert options
Detection and tracking software specifically developed for birds and aviation safety
The industry's largest 3D airspace surveillance volume
Upgradeable for simultaneous bird and drone surveillance
Fastest available system update rate
Highly accurate XYZ bird target positioning
Developed and supported by world-leading BASH and aviation safety specialists
Proven in airports, military airfields, and training ranges worldwide
Fully remote viewing and control via LAN, WAN, Internet, and wireless networks
Wide range of standard and customized operational features
Widely deployed by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, NASA, and major international airports for real-time tactical bird detection
MERLIN bird radar operating software has been specifically developed to detect and track the unique characteristics of bird targets, providing continuous surveillance from near ground level up to aircraft operating altitudes, where the vast majority of airport bird strikes occur below 500 feet.
MERLIN also utilizes advanced solid-state S-band Doppler radar sensors operating at a 10-centimeter wavelength, specifically engineered for bird detection. The system generates bird strike warnings only for medium and large birds, including flocks, minimizing false-positive alerts while still ensuring reliable detection across all relevant bird hazard categories.
Design and Engineering
MERLIN utilizes state-of-the-art solid-state S-band radar sensors with Doppler processing, enabling the detection and tracking of birds in virtually all weather conditions, including fog, rain, and snow.
The solid-state radar sensors used in MERLIN have been specifically designed and engineered for bird detection, providing significantly greater sensitivity than conventional magnetron-based bird radar systems. Traditional magnetron systems are susceptible to false positives caused by insect contamination and can become effectively "blind" in wet fog or even light rain.
Low-visibility conditions such as wet fog and rain represent some of the highest-risk periods for aircraft operations because bird control personnel, air traffic controllers, and pilots are unable to visually detect birds, while birds are likewise unable to see and avoid approaching aircraft.
MERLIN is a fully integrated and engineered system manufactured by DeTect in its own production facilities. The complete system includes temperature- and humidity-controlled field equipment consoles/enclosures, radar data processors, operating software, radar towers, and military/AOA-compliant airfield lighting and marking systems.
Mobile MERLIN systems are fully mission-deployable by land, sea, or air transport for forward operating bases and are USAF ATTLA-certified for air transport.
With the optional Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) together with HARRIER and DroneWatcher multifunctional options, the MERLIN system is capable of simultaneously providing:
All of these capabilities are delivered from a single, compact, fully mobile, ruggedized, and self-contained platform.
Expert Implementation Support
MERLIN is supported by the world's most experienced team of bird radar specialists.
With MERLIN, users receive far more than an aircraft bird strike avoidance radar system. DeTect provides comprehensive implementation support with every system, including:
Custom engineering
Turnkey installation
Complete Concept of Operations (CONOPS) development
System integration
Site-specific operational training
Long-term technical support
Every installation is supported by DeTect's implementation specialists, who possess extensive expertise in radar systems, Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard (BASH) management, and airfield operations.
Personnel supporting each MERLIN deployment include:
Former U.S. Air Force BASH Team Chief
Former U.S. Air Force Europe Bird Control Program Manager
FAA-qualified biologists
NTSB-trained accident investigators
Former USDA airport wildlife control specialists
Internationally recognized experts in radar ornithology and BASH with experience gained from projects at more than 300 airports and air bases worldwide
Industry Firsts Developed by DeTect
Over the past 30 years, DeTect's expert team has been responsible for nearly every major advancement in bird radar technology, including the following industry firsts:
Permanent bird radar installation at a Western European airport (2012)
Advanced user-configurable unlimited bird strike risk zone warning system (2011)
Bird radar system utilizing Doppler processing (2010)
Dynamic Trending functionality for automated bird strike risk warning systems (2009)
Deployment of a tactical bird strike radar in an active combat zone (Afghanistan, 2009)
Dedicated Bird Mode waveform and antenna for bird radar (2009)
All-weather solid-state bird radar system (2009)
Bird strike risk warning system installed in a commercial airport control tower (Durban International Airport, South Africa, 2008)
Automated bird strike risk warning radar system (USAF Dover Air Force Base, 2006)
Bird radar system installed at a commercial airport (Augusta Regional Airport, Georgia, 2003)
Bird detection radar deployed at a military air base (RAF Kinloss, Scotland, 2003)
Biological target detection algorithm for radar (2001)
Automatic vertical scanning radar for bird detection (2000)
National Bird Strike Risk Radar Network (AHAS – www.usahas.com, U.S. Air Force, 1999)
Baseline Bird Avoidance Model (U.S. Air Force, 1997)
Computer-based Bird Strike Risk Mission Planning Model (U.S. Air Force, 1996)
Year-round remote sensing studies of bird activity (U.S. Air Force, 1995)
MERLIN systems are available for purchase, long-term lease, or short-term rental, with or without DeTect operators. Every system is backed by a comprehensive parts and labor warranty covering the complete installation.
Since 2003, more than 250 MERLIN Bird Radar Systems have accumulated over five million operating hours, establishing an outstanding record for system availability, reliability, and low maintenance and repair costs.
Download the latest technical data sheets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN1abaDyQoA
