NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Web Page sponsor Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
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06 May 09. EADS Defence & Security (DS) together with its partner companies has successfully concluded two major radar technology programmes paving the way for the unprecedented performance of the new AESA radar technology (AESA = Active Electronically Scanning Array). The German-French-British research programme AMSAR (= Airborne Multirole Solid state Active array Radar) after extensive flight tests of the multi-channel AESA radar demonstrator in 2008 now ended with the delivery of data evaluation reports by Defence Electronics, an integrated business unit of DS, SELEX Galileo and Thales. Almost at the same time the German-British CECAR programme (CECAR = Captor E-sCAn Risk-reduction) led to successful integration of a radar demonstrator system specifically adapted to the Eurofighter/Typhoon. Under CECAR, Defence Electronics together with SELEX Galileo developed a radar demonstrator proving the feasibility of replacing the existing “Captor” Eurofighter radar. The demonstrator dubbed “CAESAR” was successfully flown on-board Eurofighter in 2007. “Over more than a decade, the joint effort of our customer nations and the partner industries has proven the enormous potential of AESA technology”, summarizes Bernd Wenzler, CEO of Defence Electronics, an integrated activity of EADS Defence & Security. “From this basis we are already looking at the next technology steps toward multifunction sensors, which will introduce multisensor performance and reduce through-life cost but need similar longterm research effort.” AMSAR was a technology programme jointly pursued since the early 1990s by an industrial consortium comprising Defence Electronics, SELEX Galileo and Thales aiming at the development of the next-generation AESA radar technology. The programme aimed at de-risking AESA radar technologies prior to their potential insertion into service with different platforms of the land, sea and air forces. AESA technology offers operational advantages such as simultaneous exertion of numerous radar modes, jamming resistance and increased reliability, all amounting to significantly reduced life-cycle cost. Instead of mechanical movement of the antenna, AESA radars use electronical steering exerted by up to several thousand of T/R (= transmit/receive) modules, basically small radars itself which enable maximum performance and versatility. Defence Electronics owns and operates an automated cleanroom production facility at its Ulm site – the so-called MicroWaveFactory – which makes it a major partner in the most important AESA programmes. Amongst others, the company is currently delivering high-performing AESA T/R modules for the space programme TerraSAR, the tri-national air defence programme MEADS