Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and Tenix Defence Systems are exploring the development of a miniaturised radar warning receiver (RWR) that will enable unmanned air vehicles to support special forces operations, writes Peter La Franchi.
Based on miniature monolithic integrated circuit technology, the device would be no larger than a standard credit card and have a maximum depth of 5mm (0.2in). The proposed unit would include a receiver antenna and processing hardware, and is a derivative of a personal RWR developed by the DSTO for use by special forces soldiers to detect ground surveillance radars.
Tenix is preparing to produce 50 of the prototype personal RWR units to support military trials from July 2005. Atimeframe has yet to be finalised for possible trials of a UAV variant.
This would be pre-programmed to detect specific emitter frequencies, rather than to provide any wideband surveillance capability. Host systems for the design would most likely be in the small- to micro-air vehicle class.
The development programme aims to produce "a very low-cost and very low-weight and power consumption RWR sensor", says Laurie Bode, director of the Australian Defence Materiel organisation's airborne self protection systems programme office.
"I tend to think the way we would use these things is that the software that comes with them will be targeting particular threat systems or emitter classes. We wouldn't try to use it as an ELINT [electronic intelligence] capability on something like Global Hawk," Bode told the Australian Association of Old Crows conference in Adelaide on 17 February.
Source: Flight International
