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perational BAe Hawk, SAE-UK.org gained access to all of the above and Anika Patel from our Events Team is pictured below receiving pilot training on the BAe Hawk. We also gained access to the Raytheon pavilion which featured land, air and civil defence projects. DefenceIntegration.org were invited to train on the Raytheon Javelin Close Combat/Anti-Armor Weapon System, described as ‘fire and forget infra red technology’. The Javelin has proved itself in service in special operations in Afghanistan and is currently been made use of by the armed forces of ten allied nations. In a shoot out between Anika and Ankit, the latter was defeated, utterly, which indicates that such a relatively large projectile could be dispatched by relatively light forces. Demonstrations were also given of the civilian microwave defence project, called the ‘Vigilant Eagle’ which can combat against surface-to-air missiles fired at passenger aircraft departing from civilian airports. Just four of these units would be sufficient to protect the city of London, its holding pattern and some of the outlying areas. The system senses a launching missile and activates a microwave emitter which causes the projectile to deviate massively from its intended path. The microwave emissions are sufficient to deflect the navigational capability of the incoming missile whilst doing no harm to the passengers of the plane. The system has been enhanced by the use of a Rafael ADT subsystem to eliminate sources of false alarms which may otherwise disrupt pilots or airport operations. This is best shown by the optics equipment pictured on the right above alongside. SAE-UK's Anika and Elena Babichenko from the Raytheon Pavillion. It might take as little as three years to fully implement the civilian defence strategy. Other Raytheon initiatives include a high band width radar communication systemwhich has myriad other applications currently under |
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development, the principle advantage of instantaneous communication of large amounts of radar data especially from UAV vehicles is that that data can be retrieved in flight rather than at the end of the mission. This constitutes a step-wise increase in signals intelligence. Finally, a land based Asraam missile system has been developed by Raytheon based on a military High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle platform. The land based platform and the instantaneous radar communication system can be integrated into a single solution.
DefenceIntegration.org met with Cobham to discuss this year's progress in the field of Air Weapons systems integration. Following on from an earlier article on this subject available online, industry is taking the lead on integration projects providing an alternative to government only implementations. Government remains however the largest stumbling block to a successful commercial implementation. Without complete data on the platform it is more time consuming to engineer the connection with the missile system. Ultimately government will remain an end part of the process of implementation if not the complete agent of delivery. Air worthiness authorities will continue to have the final say. A rough idea of the increase in efficiency of using commercial rather than government agencies for implementing weapons on multiple platforms is a time reduction from five years to approximately three. Interestingly, take up of the commercial option for implementation is more common place in the |
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