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10 Sep 07. On 10 September representatives from seven overseas delegations came to Castlemartin Range in Pembrokeshire to witness tracking trials and live firings of the Multi Mission System (MMS) designed by Thales UK in Belfast. The exercise was sponsored by UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) on the basis of an evaluation of the capabilities of the MMS and the ground-to-ground capabilities of Thales’ Starstreak missile. Tracking trials were conducted against a Hawk jet and a Lynx helicopter, clearly demonstrating the versatility of the system and in particular the accuracy of the automatic target tracking (ATT) system. This is the first time that Thales has publicly demonstrated its ATT capability. The tracking trials were followed by two live Starstreak firings using the MMS. The first was against a pop-up helicopter target at a range of 3km; the second against a moving ground target also at 3km. On both occasions the firings were 100% successful.

Sep 07. The Royal Navy’s new advanced naval air defence system, PAAMS (Principle Anti-Air Missile System), is being readied for service as prime contractor MBDA prepares for the new system to undergo firing trials. During the autumn, the PAAMS (S) Sea Trials Platform, Longbow, will be towed from its present berth in Portsmouth Naval Base (on the south coast of England) to the Mediterranean. Longbow will “sail” fitted with all the integrated system elements, except the missiles, of the Royal Navy’s new air defence system. Once in the Mediterranean, final preparations will be made to the barge and PAAMS (S) system in readiness for the start of a comprehensive firing campaign that will start in 2008. The firings will take place at the CELM (Centre d’Essais de Lancement des Missiles) test range near the Ile du Levant off the French Mediterranean coast.

18 Sep 07. Embedded Systems Conference – AdaCore announced another successful deployment of a mission-critical system using its GNAT Pro development environment. AAI Services Corporation utilised GNAT Pro as part of an overall upgrade to the U.S. Air Force T25 Simulator for Electronic Combat Training (SECT) system. The T25 SECT system is a software-based training aid that uses interactive combat laboratory exercises and simulated training missions to teach the principles of electronic countermeasures. As part of the upgrade, AAI Services updated one processor on the system’s student station from an SGI VME-based computer to a single board computer running Windows. The original software for the updated processor was ported to a different host and a new development station was added to the existing Training System Support Centre. AAI Services used GNAT Pro for Windows along with a variety of AdaCore partner software to satisfy the T25 SECT program upgrade demands. AAI Services ported and developed new software using a powerful collection of software libraries that is uniquely available with the GNAT Pro development environment, including:
– GNAT Pro
– OpenGL (Open Graphics Library)
– GLUT (OpenGL Utility Toolkit)
– FreeGLUT
– Win32 Bindings
– Touch screen driver from ELO

Sep 07. Engineers at Thales UK’s Optronics business in Glasgow are installing Thales’s CM10 optronic masts on the Royal Navy’s new submarine, HMS Astute. A multi-disciplined team of Thales engineers is working to complete both the installation of the masts and the integration with the boats highly advanced combat system. This will be followed by a series of rigorous and complex test procedures aimed at proving the equipments performance and successful integration with other mission critical boat systems. Each boat has two optronic masts, which are unique in each having 3-axis stabilised sensors including thermal imaging and high-resolution colour TV sensors. Advanced stealth features, combined with a true quick-look-round capability, provide enhanced ship safety, navigatio