Latest airport perimeter breach highlights need for artificial intelligence-fuelled speed in airfield security

A string of airport perimeter fence breaches demonstrates that security teams are failing to intercept trespassers quickly enough. According to an Optic Security Group innovation specialist, artificial Intelligence can speed things up.

An individual is in police custody after scaling a perimeter fence and accessing an aircraft without authorisation at Vancouver International Airport in Canada on Monday.

An airport spokesperson stated that the fenceline is monitored and the threat was immediately detected and contained within minutes. It took almost three hours for police to arrest the man.

In Australia, the federal government has been reviewing airport security settings following a string of airfield perimeter breaches., most notably the March 2025 incident at Avalon Airport in which a teenager exploited a hole in the fence to gain access to a Jetstar aircraft.

"Best-practice security design must assume that kilometers-long airfield fences will be challenged and quickly breached and that it will take minutes for a security team to arrive on the scene."

“Globally, perimeter breaches occur with enough frequency—typically dozens per year—that they should be treated as an expected risk condition rather than an exceptional event,” said Nicholas Dynon, Group Brand Strategy & Innovation Director at Optic Security Group.

“The differentiator between a minor incident and a major safety event is the airport’s ability to detect, verify and respond before the intruder reaches critical airside infrastructure,” said Nick, a security consultant who has conducted security risk assessments at several airport-adjacent and aviation sector sites.

“It comes down to a simple principle: speed of detection and response must be faster than the time it takes a trespasser to scale or cut their way through perimeter fencing.

"The challenge for airports is that they are vast properties with airfield perimeters in excess of 10km long. That’s a very long distance to fortify and monitor.

“Security patrols alone – whether they are boots on the ground or drone-enabled – don’t provide ubiquitous perimeter surveillance, cable-based fence sensors won’t give you a clear picture of the potential threat, and CCTV at these distances presents significant infrastructure issues.”

According to Nick, best-practice security design must assume that kilometers-long airfield fences will be challenged and quickly breached and that it will take minutes for a security team to arrive on the scene.

“This is a time and space problem that’s clearly thwarting traditional designs,” he stated.

“Properly harnessed, artificial intelligence can provide airport security systems with an unprecedented ability to collapse time and space at the perimeter and enable airport operators to regain control of their airfields."

To achieve the type of speed necessary to disrupt an adversary before they breach the perimeter, he explains, fencing must present an obstacle that sufficiently delays the individual - while associated security sensors detect and verify the threat quickly enough to initiate a successful security team interception.

"If an airport’s perimeter security system is not harnessing Artificial Intelligence-based advanced analytics for automated threat detection and verification then it will not perform quickly enough to prevent a motivated trespasser from stepping foot on the airfield," he said.

“Properly harnessed, artificial intelligence can provide airport security systems with an unprecedented ability to collapse time and space at the perimeter and enable airport operators to regain control of their airfields.

“Where AI technology gets you ahead of a trespasser is its ability to combine data from multiple sensors (CCTV, radar, thermal, fence vibration, etc.) to produce a reliable view of a surveilled area, detect a potential threat and verify it, track its movements, and direct a security response team to it in real time before the threat becomes an issue.

This is a race between trespasser and security, he says, "for which there's no prize for second place."

To find out more about how artificial intelligence enabled solutions can deliver enhanced perimeter surveillance and protection, get in touch with us or reach out to Nick directly at nicholas.dynon@opticsecuritygroup.com.