Airport Surveillance Radar from Airbus Defence and Space passes first customer acceptance test

New radar technologies improve Air Traffic Control capabilities of the Royal Canadian Air Force

MUNICH, Germany, 27 May 2015 /CNW/ - Airbus Defence and Space is to equip the military airfields in Canada with the most powerful airport surveillance radar (ASR) available today which will increase flight safety and improve the efficient use of airspace. The company has successfully passed the first Factory Acceptance Test of its new ASR-NG radar (Airport Surveillance Radar Next Generation) which will equip six airfields of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Seven radars, including one training system, are scheduled for delivery until early 2017.

"Our new ASR-NG offers an extraordinary performance proven in an extensive test phase," said Thomas Müller, head of Airbus Defence and Space's Electronics business line. "With its new capabilities it addresses the most urgent and recent concerns of air surveillance and air traffic control, e.g. safe guidance in landing and start phases, coordination of civil and military traffic and reliable identification along the new Mode 5 and Mode S standards."

Under a €50m contract awarded in 2013 by the procurement authority Public Works and Government Services Canada, the ASR-NG systems will replace the radars which have been used until now in military air traffic control. They will be used for approach control at the airfield itself and for airspace surveillance within a radius of 64 NM (110 km) to safely coordinate, amongst other things, military flight movements with civil air traffic. The ASR-NG 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.

Airbus Defence and Space supplies air traffic control and identification systems in the military and civilian sector worldwide. Amongst others, the company equips 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. In addition, the MSSR 2000I 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.

Airbus Defence and Space
Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus Group formed by combining the business activities of Cassidian, Astrium and Airbus Military. The new division is Europe's number one defence and space enterprise, the second largest space business worldwide and among the top ten global defence enterprises. It employs some 38,000 employees generating revenues of approximately €13 billion per year.

SOURCE Airbus Defence and Space

Image with caption: "New technologies give Airbus Defence and Space's ASR-NG air surveillance radar additional detection capabilities. (CNW Group/Airbus Defence and Space)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20150527_C7451_PHOTO_EN_17064.jpg

Lothar Belz, Tel.: [phone], [email protected]