Defence
Electronic Warfare - Polygone
The Mission Critical Polygone Integrated C3 System (EPICCCS) is based at the Multinational Aircrew Electronic Warfare Tactics Facility (MAEWTF) in Germany. The MAEWTF is a tri-national range and is jointly manned by US, German and French airforce personnel.
The EPICCCS system controls the aircraft and threat engagements throughout a training mission and records all aircraft and threat events in real-time. At mission end, the recorded data is 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 to the aircrew home base, via e-mail, 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 EPICCCS system is based on a number of sub-systems :
- RADAR INTERFACE
- Takes in data from a number of Secondary Surveillance Radars (SSRs) and establishes best position fix for aircraft
- THREAT INTERFACE
- Allows threat pointing, event and signal data to be recorded
- OPERATIONS
- Dedicated plan position display allows total control of range assets
- ADMINISTRATOR
- Allows range and system parameters to be modified
- REAL-TIME EVENT LOGGING
- Records in real-time :
- Aircraft Positions
- Aircraft Flight Level and Height
- 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 ERS