Chasing thieves, searching for missing people and foiling drugs smugglers on the English Channel has been the ongoing mission of Hampshire Police Authority’s Britten Norman Islander for a decade. The aircraft was recently retired and replaced with a brand new B-N Defender 4000, which will shoulder its 1,000 hours-a-year job.

Dan Cook spoke with Bob Ruprecht, air support manager, about the force’s choice of aircraft. “There’s a lot of nonsense spoken about helicopters, as far as I’m concerned,” he said plainly. “The only thing you can do in a helicopter that you can’t do in the Defender is rescuing people from a crevice, and that’s not really a police role, it’s an air ambulance role.

“Helicopters haven’t got the endurance, especially out in the Channel. The police cram everything they can on a helicopter – an observer, a stretcher, etc – then you go out on a hot day in July and they can only fly for six minutes,” he exaggerated.

Rural police forces require different things from their aircraft to their urban counterparts, and flying longer range missions in an orbit is perfect for a fixed wing aircraft like the Defender, says Ruprecht. However, despite being certain what they wanted from the aircraft, purchasing the Defender was a case of necessity rather than choice for the Hampshire Police: “The problem is that although we went to B-N, and we are very satisfied with the job they have produced, there isn’t anything else,” Ruprecht said.\r

The police looked at the Nomad, which Ruprecht considers is “not a very good aeroplane, and there’s none on the British register anyway”; twin Otters, which are aging; and the Partanavia Observer, which was too small. “There is nothing else high-wing and turbine. It’s not that we were forced down the Defender avenue, it’s a very capable aeroplane, but from my point of view it doesn’t actually give us the room to expand as more technology comes along.

The new Defender has thermal imaging cameras installed in its belly, as well as equipment for spotting drugs smugglers, equipment Ruprecht was not at liberty to talk about despite EBAN’s best cajoling. “It’s clever equipment which allows us to be very successful,” he offered. “But the majority of what we do is look for missing people, people who have run off from the scenes of crimes, robberies, burglaries, stolen cars.

“What we can do is cover large areas very quickly and eliminate them from the need for ground troops to search.”

Four pilots fly the Defender, which has five seats. “We normally fly with a pilot and two observers. The thermal imaging ball is made of glass fibre, with two cameras, one colour camera which is broadcast quality and the other which turns night into day.

That ball is mounted in the belly of the aircraft and so has to be retracted for take off and landing. When it is retracted it takes up one row of seats. The Islander had the ball on the nose.”

Hampshire Police Authority’s Islander has retired to warmer climes; Ruprecht believes it has alighted in the Congo. It was scheduled to be used by the Cheshire police, but delays in the Defender’s arrival during Britten Norman’s buy out last year meant the Cheshire constabulary “got tired of waiting,” as the plain speaking Bob Ruprecht puts it.