HENSOLDT’s solutions enable military Air Traffic Control (ATC) and Civil Air Navigation Providers (ANSPs) to safely expand the use of their airspace and integrate Unmanned Airborne Vehicles by using the latest and most advanced ATM technology.

HENSOLDT enables efficient Air Traffic Movement (ATM) – Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) airspace integration in both military and civil domains while ensuring robust flight safety by using latest technology products such as ASR-NG (ATC surveillance radar), TwInvis (passive radar surveillance) and Xpeller (Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems – CUAS).

Our ATM – UTM solution enable green economy such as Wind Farm installation or/ and Hydrogen supported power generation while maintaining safe air traffic control and air space capacity. TwInvis – a non-emitting, non-cooperative surveillance radar – reduces the emissions and installation footprint while supporting an increased air situational awareness.

In an Interview with Aviation World, Mr.Tarique Anwer, Director BD & Marketing,talks about the ATM and UTM Marketplans of HENSOLDT in India

Can you please share more about ASR-NG Radar from HENSOLDT?
The airspace worldwide is shared between civil and military users, between general aviation traffic and sports or leisure time aircraft. To avoid safety-crucial situations, state-of-the-art ATC radars have to deliver excellent detection performance, from the smallest aircraft like ultra-light gliders to the largest passenger airliner. Modern radars also have to be capable of differentiating between slow-moving rotary-wing aircraft and fast-moving military supersonic fighters without any significant blind speed gaps. ASR-NG can detect the smallest 0.5m² as well as 10.000m² targets with uppermost probability of detection. It offers exceptional no-blind speed coverage between 0 to 1.200 knots.

ASR-NG is a multi-beam 3D S-Band solid-state approach control primary and secondary surveillance radar and en-route control sensor, fulfilling ICAO Annex 10 Volume III/IV and EUROCONTROL Surveillance Standard Requirements. The system implements a fully digital Doppler detection and tracking solution with flexible and self-learning clutter and site-optimisation capabilities.

The ASR radars consist of an integrated primary and secondary radar system. The primary radar helps to detect non-cooperative objects such as small aircraft without transponders or hostile aircraft. It is based on a semiconductor transmitter and includes special signal processing techniques for wide-area surveillance and wind farm mitigation. The secondary radar, MSSR 2000 I, ensures the automatic identification of cooperative aircraft.

What Differentiates HENSOLDT ASR-NG from other products in the market?

In the rapidly growing presence of cluttered environment like one generated by wind farms or telecommunication interferences such as 4G/5G LTE mobile networks, it is of utmost importance for air traffic control radars to cope with those to keep on ensuring safety of ATC.

While previous generations of ATC radars could not suppress false alarms originating from wind farms, ASR-NG provides highest detection, resolution and tracking performance by the use of its worldwide-first, concurrent, triple-beam processing and electronic beam forming capabilities. Its detection and tracking of small rotary-wing aircraft over wind farms is field-proven, witnessed by the UK Ministry of Defence.

Using a third horn antenna feed the ASR-NG also provides a unique feature of 3D target detection. This third beam allows the measurement and calculation of altitudes of uncooperative targets such as aircraft with either no transponders or defect/disabled Identification Friend-Foe (IFF) signals – for instance during military exercises or flight operations.

With nearly no preventive maintenance, the ASR-NG system has been designed for fully autonomous, unmanned and completely remotely controlled 24/7/365 operation. The transfer of maintenance knowledge to the customer or a preferred local partner serves as standard logistic support approach. Fixed-price support agreements and supply guarantees are provided for 25 years and more.

Do you have a deployable version of AS-NG?

A modular and scalable deployable ASR-NG, with the same superior performance was developed for civil and military ATC, being transportable by land, sea and air to be deployed all over the world.

The deployable ASR-NG exploits the superior detection performance and accuracy of the stationary ASR-NG variant combined with small airlift footprint being air transportable in one transport aircraft and a deployment time of less than six hours.

The versatility of our new product combined with ASR-NG’s superior performance makes it ideally suited for ATC purposes in joint and combined missions of expeditionary units. The deployable ASR-NG has been already contracted by a European NATO member and has finished its first acceptance tests during delivery. This ATC proven technology will enable the Customer to provide state of the art ATC services to their forces using the deployable ASR-NG for example during out of area missions.

What is the TwINVIS Radar ?

The TwInvis is a multistatic coherent passive radar that supports the airspace surveillance and enables a detection of up to 200 aircraft in 3D within a radius of 250 km in a non-cooperative scenario without any emission and without the need of a transponder onboard of the aircraft. An air situation picture is generated by analyzing reflected signals from existing third-party sources such as radio and TV stations and provides additional primary radar information to the air traffic controllers with an update rate of 1 second.

Can you tell something more on the UTM and Counter UAS Solution of Hensoldt?

Our Xpeller counter – UAS Solution provides protection from the ever-increasing threat posed by drones, both in the military and the civil sector. Xpeller uses a combination of sensors to detect track, track and classify many different types of drones and assess its threat potential at ranges from a few hundred meters up to several kilometers. If it’s a serious threat, it can be then countered by choosing the appropriate countermeasures. In addition, the Xpeller can be the back bone of a future UTM system providing non cooperative surveillance to ensure no disruption of future traffic drones that may occur due to rogue operations.

What are your plans for India Market?

India is a vast country with challenging geography. We are also aware of India’s uncompromising focus on self-reliance through the “Make in India” initiative. Our proposed approach is to offer complete products and solutions to Indian customers. Through a joint production we could realise indigenous products in the most practical and incremental way.

Currently, we are in process of evaluating multiple Indian companies who could be capable of reproducing such technology locally.

Interview published in Aviation World Nov-Dec 21 Print Edition.