Upgrade of Royal Canadian Air Force Radars picks up speed

HENSOLDT, the new Sensor House, is to equip six military airfields in Canada with the most powerful new generation airport surveillance radar (ASR) available today. The Program consists of seven radar systems, including one training system, which are scheduled to be handed over in 2017. The company has successfully passed the fourth Site Acceptance Test of its radar.

“Our ASR offers superior performance in both military and civil air traffic control,” said Thomas Müller, CEO of HENSOLDT which represents the former defence electronics business of Airbus. “Thus, it guarantees absolute reliability in controlling airspace and ensures that people can travel with utmost safety.”

Under a €50m contract awarded in 2013 by the procurement authority Public Services and Procurement Canada, the ASR systems will replace the radars which are used in military air traffic control. They will be used for approach control at the airfield itself and for airspace surveillance to safely separate military flight movements and civilian air traffic. The ASR is combined with the MSSR 2000I (MSSR = Monopulse Secondary Surveillance Radar) secondary radar for automatic identification of individual aircraft. It meets the new air traffic control standards “Mode 5”, “Mode S” and “ADS-B”, which greatly improve aircraft identification queries and are currently being introduced in military and civil airspace.

HENSOLDT supplies air traffic control and identification systems in the military and civilian sector worldwide. Amongst others, the company equipped the German Armed Forces’ airports with the ASR-S (Airport Surveillance Radar, S-Band) airport surveillance radar and delivers a complete approach control system for the military airfields in Switzerland It has signed further contracts for its new ASR-NG® for Australia and in the frame of the MARSHALL program of the UK. In addition, the MSSR 2000 I secondary radar is deployed by the naval forces of Germany, France, Norway and Finland for military friend-or-foe identification. For civil and military air traffic control, those identification systems are used in countries such as Germany, France, USA, UK, Bulgaria and the Philippines.