Contributor - UK

David Donald

Thales has unveiled the latest member of its air traffic control radars. TRAC NG is a new primary en route radar that draws on technology from the STAR NG approach radar. Aimed at both civilian and military users, the system has already been sold to two countries, including Brazil. The TRAC NG is due for delivery in 2018 to the Brazilian armed forces, which manage both civilian and military air traffic for the whole country. Brazil’s radars will be partly built in-country by Omnysis, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thales


TRAC NG has been developed in line with the growing use of primary radar for en route traffic surveillance, a move driven by increasingly congested airspace. Traditionally, en route airspace control relied on secondary radars that use data transmitted through an aircraft’s transponder, while primary radars have mainly been used to provide aircraft position, speed and vector information only in the vicinity of airports.


With a range of up to 250 nautical miles, TRAC NG works in L-band and is applicable to both civilian and military employment. It can track fast and slow targets, including helicopters and UAVs, and uses improved windfarm filters and an interference map spectrum. The radar can include capabilities such as frequency agility and jammer strobe detection, as well as automatically selecting the least-jammed frequency. According to Thales, these features make TRAC NG better hardened against electronic countermeasures than other civilian radar.


TRAC NG’s compact design architecture enables easy site installation and optimizes power consumption. Compared with earlier systems, it offers improved power budget, system stability, dynamic range and instantaneous bandwidth, resulting in better detection performance, improved signal-to-clutter ratio and enhanced false alarm management. Common software, tools and parts with other Thales air traffic radars, such as the STAR NG and RSM secondary surveillance radar, can reduce the logistics footprint, documentation and training requirements if TRAC NG is operated alongside them.

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