General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA‑ASI) and Raytheon Deutschland GmbH,have announced that they will integrate the Advanced Radar Detection System (ARDS) onto a GA-ASI Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper. A scalable Electronic Support Measure (ESM) system for passive radar monitoring, ARDS is designed and developed by Raytheon Deutschland on the basis of modules which are produced in Spain and in the UK.
“Adding an ELINT [Electronic Intelligence] role to Predator B by integrating ARDS will help our customers to map air defense radar threats in contested airspace, from stand-off distances,” said Linden Blue, CEO, GA-ASI
The European-made ARDS provides passive, wide-area ELINT over land and sea and enables high-fidelity detection and direction-finding of RF emitters. The ARDS will be integrated into a standard pod that will be mounted on the centerline hard point of Predator B.
“Predator B is the ideal platform for our ARDS as it deploys the ELINT capability with significantly greater endurance at much lower cost per flight hour compared with other platforms,” said Andreas Radermacher, managing director, Raytheon Deutschland GmbH.
A combined GA-ASI and Raytheon team is currently freezing the design of the integration hardware that will make this capability available to customers in 2018. The team plans to execute developmental and operational flight tests in the second half of 2017.
Source: Press Release