EADS: Radar Technology for Thailand
Friedrichshafen, 18 October 2000
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Europe's premier aerospace group will assist Thailand with a high-performance radar system. Dornier GmbH, a group company of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, EADS, has won a contract worth millions from the Thai Air Force. Under this contract, reconnaissance and surveillance flights will be performed with an airborne SAR radar system (Synthetic Aperture Radar) which makes it possible to survey the Earth's surface at day and night and through a cloud cover. The EADS Business Unit Defence Electronics and Telecommunications, which is responsible for this contract, will start flight operations in northern Thailand at the end of October. This was reported by the company in Friedrichshafen on Wednesday.
Dr. Stefan Zoller, CEO of Dornier GmbH and Head of the Defence Electronics and Telecommunications Business Unit: "We are greatly pleased about this success because this is our first order from Thailand after the economic crisis hit Asia. Additionally this flight campaign gives us the opportunity to demonstrate, once more, our technological competence in all-weather reconnaissance systems. Already in 1997 the Airborne Systems Unit demonstrated our technical abilities in the course of a flight campaign in Indonesia where 300,000 square kilometres of tropical rain forest were mapped."
Dornier has been actively involved in the development of SAR systems since 1978. Building on this experience with satellite-based SAR technology, the company has developed the mobile, state-of-the-art DO-SAR. The system will be integrated into a Thai transport aircraft (model G 222) and scan the different regions of the country. The Dornier team (seven members) uses its own image exploitation stations to ensure image processing and interpretation. These workstations process the captured SAR data into visual images.
After the completion of this flight campaign, a further campaign is planned in order to map Thai regions of difficult access. Meetings to this effect have already been held with the Royal Thai Survey Department.
EADS was formed from the merger of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, the French Aerospatiale Matra and the Spanish Construcciones Aeronáuticas (Casa), and is one of the world's three leading aerospace companies.
Friedrichshafen, 18 October 2000/036-00
For further information:
Business Unit Defence Electronics and Telecommunications
Michael Hartwig
Phone: ++49(0)7545-8-9124, Fax: -8-5888
