Australia Orders Unattended Ground Sensors (Aug. 14)
A contract for the provision of Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems for the ADF has been signed between the Department of Defence and Textron Systems Corporation.
The UGS system will provide a significant enhancement to the surveillance capabilities of the ADF by providing units with the ability to remotely detect, locate and recognise personnel, vehicles, watercraft, and aircraft on landing strips, by day or by night, in all weather conditions prevalent to northern Australia.
UGS will be able to remotely operate at distances beyond 100 km from the sensor area, for missions of up to 30 days duration.
The UGS system is based on the Textron Terrain Commander and Thales UK suite of sensors and consists of a Central Monitoring Facility (CMF) and ten sets of Field Deployable Equipment (FDE).
Targets are detected by the FDE using seismic, acoustic and magnetic sensors. A target image is then captured using a day/night camera before being transmitted via satellite to the CMF for review.
This contract is the fifth in a series of acquisition projects under Project NINOX (named after the nocturnal Australian hunting owl) with previous acquisitions involving Perimeter Surveillance Equipment, Night Fighting Equipment, Thermal Surveillance Systems and Ground Surveillance Radar. The first two of these projects are already in service with the ADF and the latter two are currently in contract.
Australian industry, through Tenix Defence Systems in South Australia, will play a major role in the contract. They will be responsible for design and manufacture of some components as well as systems integration and final testing of the system before delivery to the ADF.
Initial deliveries of equipment to undergo operational testing are due in mid-2002, with all deliveries to be completed by late-2003.
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Contract For Provision Of Unattended Ground Sensor Systems for the ADF Signed With Textron Systems Corporation
