End of the road for SOSTAR-X?

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The European Stand-Off Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar (SOSTAR-X) programme for the development and testing of an advanced airborne ground surveillance radar demonstrator completed its Final Acceptance Review at the end of July 2007. The programme was performed under a R&D contract awarded based on a government MoU between France,

Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. SOSTAR GmbH is a Joint Venture Company between Dutch Space, EADS, Galileo Avionica, Indra Sistemas and Thales. The company was founded in 2001 to perform the SOSTAR-X Programme, demonstrating an advanced ground surveillance radar with AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) antenna that meets the majority of the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) staff requirements for the radar. Ironically, despite successfully achieving a number of technology breakthroughs, the programme--aimed at developing a European alternative to the Raytheon/ Northrop Grumman Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Programme (MP-RTIP)--seems to have reached a dead end. Until recently, SOSTAR was intended to generate the European input into the Transatlantic Collaborative AGS Radar tTCAR) that would equip the manned platforms envisaged for the AGS programme, comprising a mixed fleet of A321s and Global Hawks.

However, now that budget pressure seems to be pushing planners to drop the A321s in favour of an all-Global Hawk fleet, the intended appliction apparently no longer exists, since the Global Hawks will be supplied complete with a specially tailored version of the MP-RTIP, currently in flight testing. From May 2006 to June 2007, a Fokker 100, equipped with SOSTAR-X, carried out industrial flights over the Netherlands, Germany and France. Respective support was provided by nations in offering test areas with fixed and moving targets. During these flights, all system modes were tested.

The first part of the industrial flights focused on optimising the functionalities of the radar sensor and mission management system. The second phase dealt with the progressive integration of real-time processing in the airborne system.

The SOSTAR-X mission is usually preplanned on the ground, though the system provides a real-time in-flight replanning capability. The data collected from the missions are recorded for evaluation after flight. In parallel a data link allows for imagery to be down-linked in real time to Ground Stations for simultaneous observation on-ground.

The SOSTAR-X system demonstrator is dedicated to the surveillance of both fixed and moving targets on large coverage areas, target activity analysis on dedicated areas and classification on designated targets. The SOSTAR surveillance capability provides SAR stripmap imagery (Synthetic Aperture Radar Area Surveillance Swath SAR ASS) and MTI coverage (Moving Target Indication Wide Area Scan--MTI WAS). Both modes were performed in real time and results were displayed onboard the aircraft.