Page 42 - Australian Defence Magazine Feb-Mar 2023

42 DEFENCE BUSINESS SPACE SURVEILLANCE
FEBRUARY-MARCH 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
a long term and expand its purpose to bring both Space Domain Awareness and also our space Electronic Support Measures (ESM) capabilities forward and position them for Defence applications. This will be done by maintaining the dual purpose of this national antenna network,” explained Scott Reeman, Hensoldt Australia’s Managing Director.
“We’ve introduced new capabilities that have been de- veloped by our combined team here at the University of Tasmania and Hensoldt Australia. There are a number of very pertinent things, including the introduction of fused optical sensors and the active RF sensor, which allows us to do bi-static and multi-static tracking across the network – enabled by a high-speed data and communications link between the two sites in Tasmania.”
HENSOLDT AUSTRALIA
Hensoldt Australia’s facility in Hobart is the centre for systems integration analysis for Southern Guardian and through its parent company in Germany it has an extensive pedigree in space surveillance and control.
Scott Reeman says the University of Tasmania network, in conjunction with Hensoldt Australia’s Space Battle Man- agement Suite (SBMS) – an integrated C4ISREW capability – provides Australia with a sovereign operational capability that is free of ITAR restrictions. The company is also soon to commission a Southern Operations Centre, which will provide the ability to support 24/7 operations in the future.
Hensoldt Group also has close ties with the Deutsches
Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR – German Aero- space Centre), Germany’s Space Command and the presti- gious Fraunhofer Institute. Germany has also developed an active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar capable of monitoring LEO around the clock.
Known as the German Experimental Space Surveillance and Tracking Radar (GESTRA) the system consists of sepa- rate transmit and receive systems, together with an antenna which has 256 individual, electronically- controlled trans- mit/receive modules. The GESTRA system was inaugurated at its operation location outside Koblenz in October 2020.
Germany and France joining Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the US and the UK in the Combined Space Op- erations (CSpO) initiative in January 2020 is an opportu- nity to support significant sovereign SDA capability growth here in Australia, Reeman says.
THE FUTURE OF SDA IN AUSTRALIA
Scott Reeman says that a federation of complementary ca- pabilities is key to Australia’s SDA aspirations both in the military and civilian domains and the ultimate solution will involve a number of different organisations.
Emerging technologies such as passive radar and artifi- cial intelligence systems for example – both areas where Australian small to medium enterprises such as Silentium and AOS have significant capability – are likely to play a future role in JP9360 and other, more specific, Defence space surveillance programs.
“There’s not a single system out there that is a panacea for all – whether its commercial or defence – they all need to be able to work together,” Reeman explained.
These complementary capabilities will need to be capa- ble of performing a range of missions, from the traditional wide area surveillance of objects in orbit through to ex- tremely fine tracking and data analytics. It won’t be good enough to merely know an object’s location in space, but a sovereign nation will need to know why it’s there, what its capabilities are and what its intent might be.
For their part, Hensoldt Australia, University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government are proposing a sovereign, layered solution to the problem under a five-stream approach which leverages the existing Southern Guardian network.
The first stream will make use of existing systems; the sec- ond will harness the expansion of active RF systems inherent in the Bisdee Tier bi-static SDA system; the third stream will integrate RF and optical sensors, harness sensor fusion and fast-slew optical systems; the fourth will focus on the devel- opment of applied applications, such as ESM/RF characteri- sation; and the fifth stream will expand the sensor network to include the GESTRA radar, AI and Intelligent Agents and the growth of the core Southern Guardian system.
“There’s a lot of development work going on in Australia and so it behoves us to have a sensibly designed network that doesn’t put up barriers to expansion,” Reeman said. ■
LEFT: Southern Guardian harnesses the University of Tasmania’s Australia-wide range of space surveillance sensors
HENSOLDT AUSTRALIA