Technology
Polish Passive Radar System Awarded
PCL-PET Passive Localization System developed by the Polish PIT-RADWAR company has won the “Innovations for Security and Defence” award, for the best products contained in the Innovations – Implementations – Security – Defence 2020 catalogue.
As recalled by PIT-RADWAR, the competition this year had involved almost 50 projects, including 14 pursued by the PGZ Group companies. The Jury, including representatives of the National Security Bureau, National Centre for Research and Development, and of the portal-mundurowy.pl editing team selected 4 best projects and awarded 4 distinctions.
The winning development project - the PCL/PET Passive Location System (SPL), is being pursued by a consortium consisting of PIT-RADWAR S.A. (acting as the leader), AM Technologies Sp. z o.o. Sp. k. and Warsaw University of Technology.
Passive Location System (SPL, System Pasywnej Lokacji) is, according to the manufacturer, an innovative airspace monitoring solution. The system in question provides the user with an ability to constantly monitor the airspace and gather intelligence, regardless of the active radar activity. At the same time, the system is not an active emitter which renders it very difficult to detect for the enemy SIGINT/ESM systems.
In practical terms, the above means that solution as such is less exposed to the enemy effectors, such as the anti-radiation systems. It can operate for a longer period, delivering targeting data to the C2 suite or the battle assets directly. For instance, to air defense fire control systems. Thanks to the above, should a need emerge to switch on the active SAM radars, this would last only a moment, briefly before the engagement. Any IADS that would have SPL among its sensors is going to be much less prone to detection and neutralization.
SPL is a unique airspace monitoring solution that fuses PCL and PET detection methods - these have been separate in solutions adopted so far. PCL subsystem makes use of signals provided by occasional emitters (different than ones carried by the objects detected), such as the FM radio transmitters, DVB-T signals or the GSM network.
The PET subsystem, meanwhile, detects the signals generated by the onboard emitters of the airborne objects, including radars, datalinks, IFF systems, and navigation systems. SPL is capable of detecting stealth aircraft as well.
Not only may the system be used by the MoD, becoming a part of the Wisła and Narew air/missile defence solution (as an early warning radar), as it may also be used in civil ATC applications.
The project is co-financed by the National Centre For Research and Development, within the scope of the No. 3/2012 contest, concerning designs within the scope of research or R&D works in the domain of national defence and security (agreement no. DOBR/0043/R/ID1/2012/03).