EADS Defence & Security’s obstacle warning system to protect Royal Thai Air Force helicopters

  • Deliv­ery of three addi­tion­al HELLAS sys­tems to the Roy­al Thai Air Force
  • Tech­nol­o­gy enabling mis­sions to be car­ried out even under dif­fi­cult visibility 

HELLAS system
The HELLAS sys­tem detects even the small­est of obsta­cles that are in the helicopter’s flight path.
Source: EADS Defence & Secu­ri­ty
Click to enlarge

EADS Defence & Secu­ri­ty (DS) has been ordered to equip three addi­tion­al heli­copters of the Roy­al Thai Air Force (RTAF) with its obsta­cle warn­ing sys­tem. This device, which is known as “HELLAS” (Heli­copter Laser Radar), ensures the detec­tion of obsta­cles that are vir­tu­al­ly invis­i­ble for pilots, such as high-volt­age pow­er lines, thus enabling mis­sions to be car­ried out even under dif­fi­cult vis­i­bil­i­ty con­di­tions.
Before this, in 2005, Defence Elec­tron­ics, an inte­grat­ed activ­i­ty of DS, already deliv­ered three obsta­cle warn­ing sys­tems to the Roy­al Thai Air Force, which have been inte­grat­ed into Bell 412 heli­copters. The HELLAS sys­tems cur­rent­ly ordered will, for the first time, be installed on-board Siko­rsky S‑92 helicopters. 

HELLAS enables pilots to detect and avoid the small­est of obsta­cles, even when vis­i­bil­i­ty is bad, thus offer­ing cru­cial pro­tec­tion against one of the main caus­es of heli­copter acci­dents,” explains Bernd Wen­zler, CEO of Defence Electronics. 

The HELLAS obsta­cle warn­ing sys­tem was specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped for use on-board heli­copters. It has been suc­cess­ful­ly used for many years in Ger­man Fed­er­al Police heli­copters and in 14 civ­il defence heli­copters. HELLAS scans the air­space ahead of the heli­copter using a laser beam that pos­es no dan­ger to the human eye. It detects even extreme­ly thin wires with a high accu­ra­cy from dis­tances of up to 1,000 metres. On the HELLAS dis­play, the pilot sees a grey-scale, in-depth image of the land­scape in front of the heli­copter. Poten­tial obsta­cles are dis­played in a red sig­nal colour so that the heli­copter crew can iden­ti­fy and fly around them in time. 

EADS Defence & Secu­ri­ty (DS) is a sys­tems solu­tions provider for armed forces and civ­il secu­ri­ty world­wide. Its port­fo­lio ranges from sen­sors and secure net­works through mis­siles to air­craft and UAVs as well as glob­al secu­ri­ty, ser­vice and sup­port solu­tions. In 2009, DS – with around 21,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.4 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2009, EADS gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 42.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of about 119,000.

Text- / Bildquelle (source): EADS Defence & Secu­ri­ty
Ansprech­part­ner / con­tact:
Mar­tin Billeisen
Tel.: +49 (0)7545 8 3144
mail­to: martin.billeisen@eads.com

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