Police Air Wing

The WA Police Force is responsible for the largest non-federated Policing jurisdiction in the world. It comprises an area of over 2.5 Million square kilometres including 12,500 kilometres of coastline and a population of 2.76 million people.

The Western Australian Police Air Wing is a section of the W.A Police force which utilises various rotary and fixed wing aircraft to assist frontline Police officers in conducting their duties all across the State. The Air wing comprises of both sworn Police Officers and unsworn Police staff. The unit has aircraft engineers, Rotary and fixed wing Pilots, Tactical Flight Officers, Admin Staff and the brand new Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS or “drones”) Unit all working from the same building.

What We Do

The WA Police Air Wing has four main tasking requirements.

  • Frontline Support 
  • Transport
  • Search and Rescue
  • Intelligence gathering
Within the broader charters, the Police Air Wing has the ability to assist frontline police officers with all manner of tasks. This includes but is not limited to, tracking vehicles involved in evade Police incidents, searching for missing persons or persons at risk, deploying Tactical Response Group officers for high risk tasks, transporting Police assets around the state, targeted patrols over high volume crime areas and rescue winching operations.
Allowing us to complete these tasks is the technical equipment in our inventory. One such item is the Forward looking Infra-Red (FLIR) camera. This allows the Officers to view and record images at great distances from the aircraft with a high degree of quality, both during the day and at night. This provides great assistance to frontline officers as it allows identification and prosecution of offenders as well as provides great capability for conducting search and rescue tasks. Used in conjunction with the advanced mapping systems and downlink capability police commanders on the ground can obtain a greater appreciation of the situation and make better informed decisions.

Our Aircraft

 

Cessna Caravan
Cessna Caravan Aircraft
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Kawasaki Bolkow BK117 (B2)
A Kawasaki Bolkow BK117 (B2)

Two Pilatus PC-12’s
Two Pilatus PC-12’s

Gippsland Aeronautics GA8 Airvan

 

Gippsland Aeronautics GA8 Airvan

Remotely Piloted Aircraft

The latest addition to the W.A Police Airwing is the creation of the Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) Unit. The RPAS Unit is responsible for the oversight of all RPAS use and maintenance within the Western Australia Police Force. Additionally the Police Officers in this section are able to get a bird’s eye view of any incident location.

This is incredibly beneficial with regards to incident response, evidence gathering, crime scene analysis, photo tasking, event planning and offender apprehension. Being small in size and of comparatively low cost compared to manned aircraft in the Police fleet, the RPA are proving to be a very capable and efficient resource.

Remotely Piloted Aircraft 

Remotely Piloted Aircraft  

Remotely Piloted Aircraft