The Dutch Ministry of Defense awarded Thales a contract for nine Multi Mission Radars (MMR) designed for artillery, air surveillance, air defense, and security applications. This project is part of the ‘Nederland Radarland’ platform launched in 2002 to ensure the coherency of radar research by the Dutch science and technology community, and alignment and co-ordination of research programmes to achieve maximum synergies. The contract value was not disclosed, but the Dutch government gave a range of EUR100-250 million (USD113-282 million) in its November 2018 Defence Industry Strategy. The radars will be delivered to the Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) starting in mid-2021.
Royal Netherlands Army commander lieutenant general Leo LJA Beulen said: “Due to its unique true multi-mission capability, the MMR will not only set the conditions for winning battles at long-range by accurate target acquisition, the MMR will also enhance the RNLA air defence capability by addressing the evolving air threat, including rocket, artillery and mortar, and unmanned air systems.” Thales Netherlands naval VP Geert van der Molen said: “The Netherlands has a leading position in the field of radar development. Therefore, the ‘Nederland Radarland’ platform was established in 2002. This project is a perfect example of the results of this platform. The unique and long-lasting cooperation between the military experts of the Royal Netherlands Army and Thales has led to an extreme modern multi-mission solution, ready for today’s and tomorrow’s threats.”
The Thales Multi Mission Radars (MMR) marketed as the GM200 MM/Compact is the latest version of the T- and S-band active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar family, developed for ground applications including air surveillance, weapon locating, and counter-battery missions. The MMR can be used for a large number of tasks: artillery support, 3D airspace surveillance and air defense. Also consider other security applications, such as locating weapons. The system can simultaneously detect, track and fully classify a large number of air targets. It can even distinguish individual tracks in a fire salvo. Its size has been limited by applying the most modern technologies, so the MMR is therefore particularly mobile and is easy to transport on a standard truck.
Thales has designed a 100%-digital system, the TLS755 Multi-Mode Receiver, that integrates all onboard reception functions needed for precision navigation and landing. Right from the beginning, Thales designed in full scalebility for the TLS755, through a highly modular design that allows this unit to keep pace with all applications, including the Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS), Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) and MLS. Because of Thales breadth of expertise, all functions on the TLS755 – ILS, GNSS, MLS, GLS – were developed in-house, for guaranteed compatibility.
