Australia to take delivery of new ATM radars.

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is expected to have the first of ten new Hensoldt ASR-NG Primary/Secondary Surveillance Radars (PSR/SSR) in service by the middle of 2018, company officials told MONS during the Singapore Air Show. These new radars will equip several undisclosed RAAF airbases around the country. The ASR-NG is Hensoldt’s latest Air Traffic Management/Air Traffic Control (ATM/ATC) radar which includes an L-band (1.215 gigahertz/GHz to 1.4GHz) SSR which is compatible with the emerging military and civilian Mode-5/S transponder and identification friend or foe protocols, and an S-band (2.3GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7Ghz to 3.7GHz) PSR.

Company officials told MONS that they expect the ASR-NG to replace the firm’s existing ASR-S PSR/SSR, with the new product offering several key improvements compared to the legacy system. These include three-dimensional (velocity, azimuth and altitude) target detection, which allows the ASR-NG to detect non-cooperative targets such as those which are either missing a transponder, or which have their transponders switched off. The three-dimensional capability of the ASR-NG also confers an ability to isolate clutter caused by the spinning blades of windfarms. Moreover, the ASR-NG has an instrumented range increase of 120 nautical miles/nm (222 kilometres), compared to the 80nm (43.1km) instrumented range of the ASR-S.

Thomas Withington