Qatar Armed Forces chooses Thales Searchmaster radar to equip optionally piloted vehicles – aircraft

DIMDEX, DOHA, Qatar, 31 March 2016. Qatar Armed Forces officials sought to equip various platforms, including Optionally Piloted Vehicles - Aircraft (OPV-A), with advanced radar to assist with myriad surveillance missions and meet land and naval surveillance requirements. They found their solution at Thales in France, issuing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the Thales Searchmaster multirole surveillance radar.

This airborne radar, tailored to all platform types, meets the surveillance requirements of five mission types: ground surveillance, anti-surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare, maritime surveillance, and tactical air support.

The Searchmaster radar features an AESA active electronic scanning antenna, based on qualified technologies developed for the nose-mounted radar of the Rafale combat aircraft.

“The Qatar Armed Forces aim at excellence and innovation. We have been partnering with Thales for decades. Thanks to this new Thales solution, we shall grow further our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities,” General Khalid Ahmad Al-Kuwari, Qatar Armed Forces.

The Searchmaster radar offers high levels of threat detection performance over land or sea in all weather conditions. Thanks to its compact, lightweight design, giving it the best weight class performance, it is simple to integrate on a wide range of platforms.
It can be deployed on Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAVs, helicopters for medium to heavy missions, and turboprop-powered special mission aircrafts, providing them with multimission capabilities.

Searchmaster provides a range of 200 nautical miles (air to sea). The system can detect even the smallest stationary and moving maritime targets, including in high sea states. It also provides very high-resolution radar imagery.