Defence
Electronic Warfare - RAF Spadeadam
The Mission Critical Spadeadam Integrated C3 System (SPICCCS) is based at the UK's only Electronic Warfare Tactics Range at RAF Spadeadam. The system allows the scheduling of aircraft onto the range area, helps control the engagements throughout the mission and records all aircraft and threat events in real-time. At mission end, the recorded data are collated into a Post Mission Report which is transmitted to the aircrew base and is available for debriefing purposes as soon as the aircrew land.
Participating aircraft are identified by IFF mode C "squawk" so there are no requirements for any special on-board pods.
A range of ground based threat simulators and instrumented weapons systems are capable of emitting across the whole electronic spectrum and can simulate anything from simple jamming to sophisticated "double-digit" Surface-to-Air and Artillery systems.
Debrief material is transmitted directly to the aircrew home base, via standard telephone lines, within 20 minutes of the end of the training sortie and can be replayed on a standard desktop PC.
By fusing the threat system pointing data and emission information with the aircraft position data and ground observations, CAS have created a powerful, ultra-realistic and cost effective training environment which, through timely feedback to participating aircrew, helps maximise the benefit of every flying hour.
The distributed nature of the systems architecture ensures that constituent subsystems can be enhanced and upgraded with minimal impact to the overall system, thereby ensuring maximum flexibility to incorporate new equipment interfaces and facilities.
The Mission Critical SPICCCS system is based on a number of functional sub-systems :
- SCHEDULING
- To ensure that the number of aircraft actually flying remains manageable
- To ensure that the threat scenarios, required by the aircrew, are set-up and available
- RADAR INTERFACE
- Takes in data from a number of Secondary Surveillance Radars (SSRs) and establishes best position fix for aircraft
- THREAT INTERFACE
- Real-time communication between Range Control Centre and ground based Threats
- Allows threat operators to be instructed on which aircraft are to be engaged
- Allows unmanned threats to be command driven from SPICCCS
- Allows threat pointing, event and signal data to be recorded
- ELECTRONIC WARFARE THREAT CO-ORDINATOR
- Dedicated plan position view allowing threats to be co-ordinated against mission aircraft
- RANGE CONTROLLER
- Dedicated plan position display allows total control of range assets
- ADMINISTRATION
- Allows range and system parameters to be modified
- REAL-TIME EVENT LOGGING
- Records in real-time :- Aircraft Positions
- Aircraft Flight Level and Height
- Threat pointing data (Azimuth, Elevation and Range)
- Threat signals
- Threat events
- Operator observations
- DEBRIEF SYSTEM
- Brings together all recorded data and sorts by mission and aircraft
- Allows data editing for enhanced debrief
- Transmits data to aircrew home base for analysis using EGPMR