Blighter radar, a Cambridge based pioneering designer and manufacturer of ground-based smart electronic-scanning micro-Doppler radars, has won a follow-on contract from a military customer in Southeast Asia to supply its Blighter B400 series radars for border surveillance.
The radars will be installed by Blighter’s local systems integration partner onto specialist army vehicles for rapid deployment to border infiltration hotspots. When required, the radars can also be trailer mounted on a higher mast or dismounted and set up on a tripod for locations that are inaccessible by vehicle.
Blighter’s ultra-reliable low power solid-state radars contain no moving parts so are easily transportable and can be quickly reconfigured to match the changing patterns and locations of border infiltration.
James Long, CEO at Blighter, says, “Our radars have served this major economy for many years now, so we are delighted that the customer has chosen our technology to extend the surveillance coverage across the country’s diverse border terrains which include mountains, dense forests, arid deserts and coastlines.”
The radars will be supplied with the company’s AI-assisted BlighterNexus software to allow easy integration of the new radars with existing sensors and to provide operators with a common operating picture (COP) across the country’s strategic border regions.
According to Blighter, the additional radars will result in a significant boost to situational awareness, allowing operators to detect, track and classify small surface targets (people, vehicles and vessels) and near ground aerial threats in real time, in the most demanding environments. The radars deliver up to 360-degrees of pure electronic scanning coverage and are field proven to work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in all weather conditions, including fog.
“Our system architecture will enable multiple radars and peripherals to be managed via a unified interface, providing security forces with a scalable, secure and smart view of the border environment,” says James Long. “This level of integration will reduce operational blind spots and improves coordination between surveillance system operators and threat response teams.”
The B400 radar’s compact, modular design and low-power electronic scanning frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) technologies provide uninterrupted rapid surveillance over a wide area detecting moving vehicles and persons (including ‘crawlers’) at ranges of up to 32 km.
Blighter radar mounted on vehicle
Blighter radars are trusted by the UK Ministry of Defence for forward operating base (FOB) protection, the South Korean Army for border surveillance along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), by the United States Air Force for drone detection, and by several Five Eyes/NATO customers for deployment on their mobile surveillance and armoured vehicles.
Blighter introduced the world’s first, non-rotating, solid-state, electronic-scanning, micro-Doppler ground radar in 2003. Today, the product portfolio covers the three domains of land, sea and air with the B400, C400, A400 and A800 family of ground-based radars. The radars’ modular design enables the technology to be deployed on towers and vehicles, and as dismounted portable systems on tripods.
