EADS Defence & Security increases air traffic safety in Germany

This Mode S Cluster guarantees the automatized guidance of civil and military aircraft in an area of 1,700 x 1,500 km. Thus, flight safety and the efficiency of airspace utilization is increased considerably. "Air traffic control authorities allover the world are faced with continually increasing air traffic density," explained Bernd Wenzler, CEO of Defence Electronics. "Together with military air traffic, this situation requires a high-performance guidance system ensuring safety, comprehensive data exchange and efficient allocation of airspace." Under the project RAMOS, Defence Electronics, an integrated business unit of DS, since 2005 has equipped six long-range surveillance radars with so-called monopulse secondary surveillance radar systems MSSR 2000 I. These systems provide an overview of the air situation based on interrogations and automatic replies from individual aircraft. MSSR 2000 I is the only secondary radar in the world certified according to the latest civil and military air traffic control standards The MSSR 2000 I systems establish a Mode S Cluster network which is safely guiding all aircraft in the area. In a Mode S Cluster network, each individual aircraft which is equipped with a Mode S transponder can be identified and tracked automatically without the necessity of individual radar target acquisition enabled by autonomous target data handover from one radar station to the other. In the military field, MSSR 2000 I is used for automatic friend-or-foe identification (IFF), thus avoiding the erroneous engagement of friendly forces. It is deployed on German naval vessels and used by the armed and naval forces of France, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, Slovakia, Lithuania, Uruguay and Malaysia. For air traffic control purposes it is in service in such countries as Portugal, Bulgaria and the Philippines.