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05 May 16. ERA continues its military strategy. Czech Republic-based ERA has sealed a strategic partnership with Saab, covering research and development of active and passive airspace surveillance systems for military use.
ERA emphasised the “significant export potential” of the partnership in a 4 May announcement.
“From co-operation with Saab, we expect further extension of our activities in supplying comprehensive radar solutions,” said ERA CEO Viktor Sotona.
ERA has traditionally focused on passive surveillance technologies, including multilateration and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) systems, terminal and wide area surveillance, vehicle tracking, noise and operations revenue management, flight tracking, target identification, and range management solutions.
Arguably, its most prominent military-oriented product is the VERA passive electronic intelligence (ELINT) surveillance system, which is designed to detect, identify, locate, and track emitters at long range. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
05 May 16. Global Hawk readies for OBC trials. Northrop Grumman is set to commence flight tests of a Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) equipped with UTC Aerospace’s Optical Bar Camera (OBC) system this August, IHS Jane’s has learned. Speaking at AUVSI’s Xponential 2016 conference and exhibition in New Orleans, Mike Lyons, the company’s business development programme lead for Global Hawk, said that the two-month long effort will validate that the aircraft can fly and operate with the payload. Flight-testing will take place at Northrop Grumman facilities in Palmdale, California. Lyons said that ground-based testing of the OBC on Global Hawk is underway and on schedule, adding that modelling has shown that the payload will not impact on the aircraft and will function correctly. The OBC will be integrated on the airframe via Northrop Grumman’s Universal Payload Adaptor, which is fitted underneath the aircraft and is designed to offer an open interface and power bus for payloads; it has a 1,200lb (544 kg) capacity. The payload is typically integrated onboard the US Air Force’s Lockheed Martin U-2 aircraft, but has been provided by the service for testing on the Global Hawk along with the Senior Year Electro-optical Reconnaissance System (SYERS-2), testing for which has already taken place.
The OBC is a long focal length camera that provides very high resolution panoramic images from extreme altitudes. It utilises wet-film magazine and has previously been identified as having a 762 mm focal length, and a 114 Ú 1,854 mm image format.
Lyons said that while the OBC typically only operates for 2 hours, Northrop Grumman will look to run the system during the full mission profile of the Global Hawk – up to 24 hours, with a stretch of 34 hours – and will only be limited by the amount of film that can be carried.
Trials of the U-2 sensors on the Global Hawk come ahead of an effort to integrate the MS-177 multi-spectral sensor, previously flown aboard the company’s legacy E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft. (Source: IHS Jane’s)
05 May 16. US Army UAS sense-and-avoid operations to start this year. The US Army’s Ground-Based Sense-and-Avoid (GBSAA) system is to begin operations in 2016 at a handful of sites, and begin expanding capability next year, an army engineer revealed. The first GBSAA site was established at Ft Hood in Texas in late 2014, and GBSAA operations are begin this year at five army fielding sites in the United States and at a few US Air Force sites, Adam Hendrickson, a sensor and systems engineer for the army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) Project Office, said during a 4 May briefing at AUVSI’s annual Xponential conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The army is the designated lead for developing GBSAA to support Pentag