HENSOLDT Delivers Radars for Australian Air Traffic Control

The installation of HENSOLDT’s ASR-NG Air Traffic Control systems in Australia takes up speed. Recently, the second Final System has completed site installation joining one Interim System and another already installed Final System.

The Royal Australian Air Force, through the Department of Defence, have purchased 9 ASR-NG based Fixed Defence Air Traffic Control Surveillance Sensors (FDATCSS programme also referred to as AIR 5431 Phase2) and one Operational Maintenance Trainer (OMT). Due to the location requirements for the Final systems at two of the sites, two Interim systems are being installed to provide the customer with continuous radar coverage while the legacy radars are removed and replaced in situ with the new Hensoldt solutions.

The installation poses particular challenges because the area covered comes close to the area of Western Europe. Oakey, near Brisbane, the second Final System, now has completed site installation and joins East Sale, the first Interim System, in the Gippsland of southern Victoria and Tindal, the first Final System which is installed in the far north of Australia. All systems are now in the Set-to-Work phase, which will lead to Site Acceptance Testing and then operations. Tindal is expected to be operational in November 2018. Nowra Interim is currently being installed at the Naval Air Station Nowra (part of HMAS Albatross, near the town of Nowra, New South Wales. Additionally, the Operational Maintenance Trainer (OMT) has just ‘powered-on’ at the RAAF training facility at RAAF Base Amberley, near Brisbane, Queensland. In the project execution, HENSOLDT is working together with Australian partners IE-Asia Pacific Pty Ltd and Nova Systems Pty Ltd.

Each of the ASR radars consist of an integrated primary and secondary radar system. The primary radar helps to detect non-cooperative objects such as small aircraft without transponders or hostile aircraft. It is based on a semiconductor transmitter and includes special signal processing techniques for wide-area surveillance. The secondary radar, MSSR 2000 I, provides automatic identification of cooperative aircraft. It meets the new “Mode S/Mode 5” air traffic control standard, which greatly improves aircraft identification queries and is currently being introduced in all NATO and allied forces.

HENSOLDT supplies customers all over the world with air traffic control and identification solutions for military and civilian applications. Amongst others, the company has equipped the German Armed Forces’ airfields with the ASR-S (Airport Surveillance Radar, S-Band) airport surveillance radar and is delivering a complete approach control system for the military airfields in Switzerland. Different versions of its new ASR-NG radar are under contract by Canada and the UK. The MSSR 2000 I secondary radar is deployed for military friend-or-foe identification by the naval forces of Germany, France, Norway and Finland.