GIADS-III and KOFA-IP technology for the German Luftwaffe

CASSIDIAN and FREQUENTIS deliv­er the first con­trol and report­ing cen­tre using GIADS-III and KOFA-IP tech­nol­o­gy to the Ger­man Luftwaffe 

• Major sys­tem han­dover in the area of mis­sion con­trol sys­tems for the Luftwaffe
• Mis­sion Com­mand 2 (Ein­satzführungs­bere­ich 2) reports GIADS III to NATO as ready for service
• The KOFA/GIADS sys­tem is per­form­ing valu­able ser­vice in secur­ing Germany’s – and Europe’s – airspace

28 April 2011 – The con­sor­tium “KOFA – GIADS” (Cas­sid­i­an and Fre­quen­tis Nachrich­t­en­tech­nik GmbH) has deliv­ered an ultra­mod­ern con­trol and report­ing cen­tre (CRC) to the Ger­man Air Force, rep­re­sent­ed by the Fed­er­al Office for Infor­ma­tion Man­age­ment and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy of the Bun­deswehr (IT-AmtBw), in Erndtebrück.

Cas­sid­i­an is sup­ply­ing the “bat­tle­field com­mand and con­trol sys­tem” com­po­nent, and Fre­quen­tis the new IP-based voice and data com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem KOFA-IP. With this deliv­ery, all Ger­man com­mand posts of this Mis­sion Com­mand are now equipped with KOFA/­GIADS-based technology.

This upgrade from GIADS II to GIADS III tech­nol­o­gy essen­tial­ly increas­es the num­ber of work­sta­tions per CRC by one third, dou­bles the num­ber of radar inter­faces pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed and par­tial­ly auto­mates and exten­sive­ly enhances the entire report­ing sys­tem. New inter­faces to the Bundeswehr’s com­mand and con­trol infor­ma­tion sys­tems were realised (NCO capa­bil­i­ty). GIADS was expand­ed to include a map man­age­ment sub­sys­tem and a plan­ning component.

The ana­logue KOFA com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem pre­vi­ous­ly used has been upgrad­ed to state-of-the-art IP tech­nol­o­gy (KOFA-IP) for secure voice operation.

The GIADS air defence sys­tem from Cas­sid­i­an has been oper­a­tional since 2000, with the task of mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance for the air­space over Ger­many and con­tigu­ous areas. The sys­tem process­es the infor­ma­tion about fly­ing objects that is deliv­ered by radar sys­tems and presents it on the GIADS work­sta­tions. The mil­i­tary air sit­u­a­tion dis­played there is auto­mat­i­cal­ly sup­ple­ment­ed with civ­il ATC data (e.g. air sit­u­a­tion from Euro­con­trol, flight sched­ules). Any objects detect­ed are auto­mat­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied using the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy, which pro­vides a con­tin­u­ous­ly updat­ed air sit­u­a­tion pic­ture. Here, the Sen­try™ sys­tem from the sub­con­trac­tor ThalesRaytheon­Sys­tems LLC per­forms valu­able ser­vices. The air sit­u­a­tion data is exchanged with neigh­bour­ing CRCs with­in the frame­work of the NATO Inte­grat­ed Air Defence Sys­tem, NATINADS. The air sit­u­a­tion pic­ture, along with infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to the assign­ment, is put at the dis­pos­al of oth­er activ­i­ties and CRCs.

Through KOFA-IP, Fre­quen­tis is expand­ing the GIADS CRC elec­tron­ics to pro­vide work­sta­tions opti­mised for IP-based voice and data com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing a ful­ly inte­grat­ed voice record­ing and play­back sys­tem. The same IP infra­struc­ture is addi­tion­al­ly used to inte­grate a wide vari­ety of IT ser­vices. The advan­tages of this IPbased sys­tem lie in the inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty in the net­work­ing of all voice and data inter­faces, as well as the added val­ue gen­er­at­ed through the seam­less inter­ac­tion of all sys­tems. This is the pre­req­ui­site for seam­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the voice and data media. By plac­ing its faith in the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy offered by this trail­blaz­ing sys­tem, the Bun­deswehr is set to become the world leader in this field.

Thus, the KOFA/GIADS sys­tem is per­form­ing valu­able ser­vice in secur­ing Germany’s – and Europe’s – airspace.

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com)
Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue-added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2010, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.9 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2010, the Group – com­pris­ing Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 45.8 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 121,000.

Source:
CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security

Cas­sid­i­an Press cen­tre:
http://www.cassidian.com/cassidian/int/en/press-centre.html

About Fre­quen­tis AG
Fre­quen­tis is an inter­na­tion­al provider of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and infor­ma­tion sys­tems in the fields of Defence, Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment and Pub­lic Safe­ty and Trans­port (police, fire and res­cue ser­vices, ship­ping and rail­ways). A high degree of reli­a­bil­i­ty, con­nec­tions in the mil­lisec­ond range and user-friend­ly design are the cen­tral fea­tures of Fre­quen­tis prod­ucts. Togeth­er with a wide range of ser­vices, these prod­ucts form the key com­po­nents of a cus­tomis­able con­trol cen­tre solu­tion for the coor­di­nat­ed han­dling of secu­ri­ty-rel­e­vant events, the main goal being to pro­tect peo­ple and prop­er­ty. Rough­ly 14,000 work­sta­tions are cur­rent­ly in oper­a­tion through­out the world. Fre­quen­tis pos­sess­es diverse com­pe­tences and com­pre­hen­sive project knowhow deriv­ing from numer­ous inter­na­tion­al projects. With head­quar­ters in Vien­na, Fre­quen­tis employs a work­force of over 900 around the globe. Total sales in 2010 came to around € 155 million.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please vis­it: www.frequentis.com

Con­tact:

Cas­sid­i­an
Susanne Hartwein Tel.: +49 (0)731 392 1757
susanne.hartwein@cassidian.com

Fre­quen­tis AG
Mag. (FH) Slad­jana Bauer Tel.: +43 (0)1 81150–1320
sladjana.bauer@frequentis.com