Canberra, Australia. HENSOLDT Australia has delivered an enhancement to the RAAF’s Radar Operational Maintenance Trainer (OMT). The OMT training solution is provided to the RAAF to enable technicians to develop the skills required to operate and maintain radar systems in a controlled, ‘real life‘ environment. Developed in Australia, the Antenna Control Unit (ACU) Stimulator emulates a working antenna and pedestal system. The RAAF technician who is undergoing radar training can now interact as if it were an actual antenna, enabling them to learn how to operate the complete system and respond to issues and malfunctions in a realistic and timely manner.
This enhancement aligns the OMT software with that used in the operational radars, rather than it being a modified and unique training software release. This reduces the life cycle costs for the system and allows the OMT to be used as an effective rollout platform for future software releases, minimising the downtime requirements for operational system through its 20-year life-of-type.
HENSOLDT Australia has been providing operational and maintenance support, installation, testing and evaluation of radars across a number of RAAF bases and naval platforms. This gave the development team a clear understanding of the end user environment. HENSOLDT Australia has expanded its engineering, technical, repair and manufacture capabilities, and this allowed extensive work to be undertaken to explore the system environment and assess sources of risk, and to develop requirements and formulate design.
The ACU Stimulator was designed and manufactured in the HENSOLDT Australia workshop. Acceptance testing was completed, and it is now operational in the OMT. With this success, the second and spare system will be manufactured and delivered in 2021, with the product available for export to support not only HENSOLDT Radars, but also other ATC radars.
