NASHUA, N.H., 5 Jan. 2007. BAE Systems has successfully demonstrated a passive geo-location capability that enables aircraft to quickly and accurately identify enemy positions in crowded radio frequency (RF) environments. The equipment can be deployed on any type of military aircraft.
The company demonstrated, for the first time, the ability to nearly instantaneously construct a geo-location solution, without the need for multiple aircraft to receive simultaneously the same pulse of an enemy radar signal. The new capability, demonstrated at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif., enables aircraft to calculate geo-location with any radio frequency (RF) signal.
"The battlespace is a complex environment that is increasingly saturated with RF energy," says Dr. Hugh Kao, BAE Systems technical director at Yonkers, N.Y. "These conditions make it hard for multiple aircraft to simultaneously detect the same signal. The technology we have demonstrated enables accurate real-time geo-location of threat signals from bits and pieces of data."
The capability has been tested in a series of flights. The Department of Defense's Joint Strike Fighter program office supported the flight testing, which was accomplished with a single T-39 aircraft and a ground station performing as a "virtual" aircraft.
The demonstration follows BAE Systems' demonstration, in November 2004, of how a single aircraft can passively detect and locate threat radars. The flights were conducted at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., using an F-15 fighter.
