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By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans
The Indonesian National Armed Forces are responsible for patrolling an archipelago of 17,000 islands that extend 5,150 kilometers from east to west. For this purpose, it operates a large number of patrol craft and maritime patrol aircraft to keep tabs on illegal entries and activities occurring within its territorial waters. Nonetheless, the sheer size of the archipelago, not to mention the land mass of the islands as well, makes it difficult to monitor. One other way this can be effectively achieved is through the deployment of large numbers of medium-altitude long-endurance MALE UAVs.