Cassidian’s new radar for the German Navy’s F125 class frigates has demonstrated its particular reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities during tests in the North Sea and Baltic Sea and during factory acceptance tests.

In two test series of several weeks, the TRS-4D naval radar showed an extraordinarily high precision, particularly when detecting small targets such as UAVs, guided missiles and periscopes. Subsequently, the customer confirmed the system’s capabilities during the factory acceptance test at Cassidian’s Ulm location.

At the beginning of the test series, which ran for over a year, the radar underwent functional tests on the beach, which were carried out by the Bundeswehr Technical Centre No. 71 in Surendorf. Next year, the first system is planned to be integrated into the “Baden-Württemberg” lead ship.

The new radar’s system concept allows the advantages of AESA technology (Active Electronically Scanned Array) to also be fully exploited for small and medium-sized ships, for the first time. Thanks to the use of multiple independent emitters in its antenna, this system is more accurate and faster than conventional radars, allowing it to tackle a wider-than-ever range of targets, e.g. for protection against asymmetric attacks. The system architecture is designed so that the radar system’s capabilities can be easily extended, through software updates.

For the F125 frigates, the system will be deployed in a version with four fixed arrays. Using electronically controlled beams, these planar arrays are able to track individual targets much more accurately than mechanically rotating antennas, whose update rate depends on their rotational speed. The four F125 frigates of the “Baden-Württemberg” class should replace the German Navy’s F122 “Bremen” class ships from 2016.