Europe’s advanced airborne ground-surveillance radar system demonstrator has received the green light to start flight tests, weeks after its maiden flight.
The EADS Military-led stand-off surveillance and target acquisition radar (SOSTAR-X) technology demonstration programme uses a modified Fokker 100 (pictured below during its 22 December début), featuring a 5m (16ft 5in) radome beneath its forward fuselage.
The aircraft was awarded a special certificate of airworthiness (SCA), or a military supplemental type certificate for the modification, which was carried out by Dutch manufacturer Fokker Services. Windtunnel tests were performed to verify the effects of the radome on the aircraft's flight envelope and structural reinforcements in the tail were made to compensate for the effects.
The SCA allows the five-nation programme to commence installation of all mission equipment this year in Friedrichshafen, Germany and start test flights in early 2006. The industry flight tests will be conducted both in Germany and the Netherlands. The €90 million ($110 million) SOSTAR-X project involves Dutch Space, EADS, Galileo Avionica, Indra and Thales.
Late last month the SOSTAR Steering Committee, comprising defence ministries from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain approved the programme's post test review, which then permitted the installation of the randome.
The system includes a developmental synthetic-aperture radar/ground-moving target indication sensor, which is expected to feed technology into the proposed payload for NATO’s future Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system.
Source: Flight International
