CASSIDIAN ensures flight safety of all German Forces aircraft

• Mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly concluded
• Lat­est-tech­nol­o­gy transpon­der STR 2000 ful­fills new require­ments of air traf­fic con­trol authorities

23 Sep­tem­ber 2011 – Cas­sid­i­an, the defence and secu­ri­ty divi­sion of EADS, has suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed the mod­ern­iza­tion of the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion equip­ment of all Ger­man Forces’ air­craft. With the final deliv­er­ies in a mul­ti-year mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram, Cas­sid­i­an has hand­ed over the last tranche of its STR 2000 transpon­ders to the Ger­man Pro­cure­ment Author­i­ty BWB. In total, more than 650 transpon­ders were deliv­ered since 2002. The new equip­ment ensures the safe oper­a­tion of air­craft in civil­ian air­space accord­ing to new require­ments of the Euro­pean air traf­fic con­trol author­i­ty EuroControl. 

Transpon­ders are a cru­cial ele­ment to ensure flight safe­ty. As part of air traf­fic con­trol, inter­roga­tors on the ground emit sig­nals to request flight data from indi­vid­ual air­craft, e.g. on their ori­gin, course or speed. These requests are then auto­mat­i­cal­ly answered by transpon­ders locat­ed on board the approach­ing air­craft, so that the posi­tion of each indi­vid­ual air­craft can always be reli­ably tracked. 

Mil­i­tary air­craft also respond to these non-mil­i­tary requests. In the so-called Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion-Friend-or-Foe (IFF) process, they even trans­mit addi­tion­al data in an encrypt­ed mode, allow­ing all air­craft to be unmis­tak­ably iden­ti­fied, e.g. dur­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. There­by, inad­ver­tent friend­ly attacks can be pre­vent­ed. For this rea­son, mil­i­tary air­craft require transpon­ders with both civ­il and mil­i­tary functions. 

Cas­sid­i­an has wide expe­ri­ence in the field of mil­i­tary and civ­il air traf­fic con­trol and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The com­pa­ny has sup­plied numer­ous mil­i­tary iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems for air, naval and ground vehi­cles to a num­ber of armed forces, e.g. in Ger­many, France, Fin­land and Aus­tralia. For civ­il air traf­fic con­trol, Cassidian’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems are used in coun­tries such as Aus­tria and the Philippines. 

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 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