EADS is preparing to fly next month the Fokker 100 testbed that will be equipped with Europe’s stand-off surveillance and target acquisition radar (SOSTAR-X) demonstrator. The trials will lay the foundations for European industrial participation in the Transatlantic Collaborative AGS Radar (TCAR) being offered by the Transatlantic Industry Partnership for Surveillance (TIPS) consortium to meet NATO’s alliance ground surveillance (AGS) requirement.
The flight campaign will kick off in the wake of a decision by EADS to move the SOSTAR-X work into its Military Aircraft division, underscoring the unit’s new focus on mission systems and airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.
Windtunnel tests revealed that installation of the 5m (16.4ft)-long radome on the Fokker 100 required “some structural reinforcement of the tail”, and that the aircraft must operate within a restricted flight envelope, says SOSTAR general manager Enno Littmann.
Flight trials of the active electronically scanned array radar from Fokker Services’ Woensdrecht facility in the Netherlands are due to start by the end of this year and run into early 2007, culminating in a “VIP” operational demonstration to government and military officials and representatives of potential non-NATO export customers in April 2007.
The TIPS solution for AGS envisages a fleet of five Airbus A321s and seven Northrop Grumman Global Hawk unmanned air vehicles equipped with TCAR sensors.
A development contract is due to be signed in June 2006. SOSTAR-X technology could also be used in a potential image intelligence version of the EuroHawk system being studied by Germany, says Littmann.
EADS, Galileo Avionica and Thales each hold 28.2% of the €90 million ($109 million) SOSTAR-X project, while Indra has 10.4% and Dutch Space 5%.
ANDREW DOYLE/MUNICH
Source: Flight International
