New radar technology brings advantages for Eurofighter missions

• Cas­sid­i­an proves capa­bil­i­ties of a new e‑scan radar demon­strat­ed by sim­u­la­tion study
• Sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ment of mis­sion suc­cess and safe­ty of pilots

An E‑Scan radar can full­fill sev­er­al tasks qua­si simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Click to enlarge

E‑Scan anten­na in Eurofight­er nose dur­ing test cam­paign Click to enlarge

22 March 2012 – Cas­sid­i­an, the defence and secu­ri­ty divi­sion of EADS, has demon­strat­ed, in a sim­u­la­tion study, the oper­a­tional advan­tages of the Eurofighter’s future e‑scan radar and has intro­duced the first pilots to the par­tic­u­lar fea­tures of this technology. 

The two-year study was car­ried out under con­tract to the mil­i­tary pro­cure­ment office, which is the Bundeswehr’s Fed­er­al Office for Equip­ment, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Use (BAAINBw), in coop­er­a­tion with IABG GmbH in Munich/Ottobrunn. For sev­er­al years, IABG has been oper­at­ing a man-in-the-loop sim­u­la­tor (MILSIM) to sim­u­late real­is­tic mis­sion sce­nar­ios for Ger­man Air Force air­craft, such as the Eurofight­er. The objec­tive of the study was to com­pare, under real­is­tic con­di­tions, the new elec­tron­ic beam scan­ning radar tech­nol­o­gy with the radar cur­rent­ly in use, which is based on mechan­i­cal anten­na con­trol. The results were intend­ed to be used to demon­strate the tech­ni­cal und oper­a­tional advan­tages of the e‑scan radar with wide field of regard and to devel­op options for improve­ment of the future behav­iour of the pilots dur­ing missions. 

“Our e‑scan soft­ware has demon­strat­ed that tar­get detec­tion is much bet­ter and tar­get track­ing more sta­ble with the new tech­nol­o­gy, which means that both mis­sion suc­cess and safe­ty of pilots can be enhanced,” explains Elmar Com­pans, Head of the Sen­sors & Elec­tron­ic War­fare unit at Cassidian. 

In con­trast to con­ven­tion­al radars, an e‑scan radar onboard the Eurofight­er can per­form sev­er­al tasks prac­ti­cal­ly simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The term “e‑scan” results from the fact that the radar beam is basi­cal­ly steered elec­tron­i­cal­ly. Unlike tra­di­tion­al radars with mechan­i­cal steer­ing, the trans­mit­ting ener­gy does not orig­i­nate from a cen­tral trans­mit­ter, but is gen­er­at­ed by more than 1,000 transmit/receive mod­ules (TRM). Oper­at­ing the largest Euro­pean assem­bly line for such radar mod­ules, Cas­sid­i­an is the pio­neer of this tech­nol­o­gy in Europe. 

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com) Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue-added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2010, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.9 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2010, the Group – com­pris­ing the Divi­sions Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 45.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 121,000.

CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security 

Con­tact:
Lothar Belz Tel.: +49 (731) 392 3681
lothar.belz@cassidian.com

Source:
Cassidian 

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