Cassidian, the defence division of EADS, introduces a new electronically scanning radar which opens up new opportunities for the surveillance and protection of sensitive industrial or military installations.

As part of Cassidian's “Spexer” security radar family, the new Spexer 500 has been launched during last week’s Milipol exhibition in Paris.

“Our new radar uses the latest digital beam forming (DBF) technology, which enables the early detection even of single pedestrians in all weather conditions. Spexer 500 gives police or security forces additional reaction time in order to deal with illegal intruders,” explained Elmar Compans, Head of Cassidian's Sensors & Electronic Warfare unit.

Spexer 500 is optimized for the surveillance of critical infrastructure such as oil fields, power plants, airports or military camps. With an instrumented range of 0.1 to 9 km and an extremely high update rate of less than 1.5 seconds for a sector of 120°, it is able to reliably detect suspicious movements on the ground and in the air at a very early stage. This is in particular true for very small and slowly moving targets due to the high Doppler resolution of the radar.

In combination with a low false alarm rate and flexible surveillance modes enabling e.g. a sector blanking or the definition of priority sectors, this ensures a superior surveillance performance and a high level of situational awareness. Due to its low weight and low power consumption, the Spexer 500 can be deployed in mobile applications on a tripod or a vehicle, e.g. to monitor specific and critical spots.

The radar is part of Cassidian's “Spexer” security radar family which consists of several sensors, each optimized for specific applications in the fields of border, infrastructure, perimeter and coastal surveillance. A specific version for border surveillance, Spexer 2000, is under production. A military version has been developed for the German Army.