National platforms become invisible with ASELSAN
Haluk Görgün, Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Manager of ASELSAN, made a statement to the AA correspondent regarding their work on radar absorbing technologies and low visibility.
Emphasizing that "radar absorption" is among the subjects they attach importance to, Görgün stated that the scattering surfaces and areas of the existing platforms should be well determined, so that it should be well understood how the enemy radars can detect the platform, from what distance and in what way.
Görgün said that they developed a software called RAPID, which can be used only in ASELSAN, that can help detect this and then develop materials and dyes related to its treatment. Görgün made the following assessments:
"With this software, platforms that need radar absorption may have an aircraft wing, a part of its ammunition, nose, tail, we can analyze it and analyze what part should be prevented from appearing on the radar the most. Local and national, our engineers have developed and continue to develop. , we have software that gives talent.
After that, there is the issue of preparing the recipe for those regions and applying the materials and paint according to the recipe. Again, we can do this with our own analytical work. It requires a very serious talent, good material knowledge, optimization and engineering knowledge, chemistry knowledge, informatics and software knowledge. We have a unit where we collect all of these. A 109 man/year experience is throughout ASELSAN. 25 full time people have been working for this job for a long time. We are working with 5 different universities while making developments in this field. There are also about 10 companies that we are responsible for the development of paints and various chemicals and that we purchase services from.
We are progressing very well in making these analyzes for air, sea and land platforms, and in the development of materials and paints that reduce scattering surfaces. We are working on this for the National Combat Aircraft, and we continue. Similar studies continue for all other manned and unmanned platforms.
Working in NATO with few countries
Görgün also gave information about the works carried out in NATO in this field and said that a working group was formed to bring together the capabilities of a few countries.
Stating that ASELSAN also supports this working group, Görgün said, "Our competence and talent are also known in this working group. We take part in the working group with in-depth knowledge in this field, with experience starting from materials science and the ability to analyze it." said.
Görgün pointed out that these capabilities were used starting from the design stage of the National Combat Aircraft, "Because the platform may need some changes on its structural surface or the structural surface is okay, what will be applied there, what material will be applied? Because when you apply the material, you need to apply several layers. They also have paint, weight and budget. Works that need to be optimized together. As ASELSAN, we take responsibility for domestic and national platforms." he said.
In NATO project with special permission
ASELSAN takes part in the NATO working group carried out between the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Turkey for the development of the low visibility design processes of the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle.
Within the scope of the studies, the model production of the vehicle has been completed, and radar absorbing material application activities continue. In the next 3 years, radar cross-sectional area measurements of the radar-absorbing material model, produced by establishing a new NATO working group, will be made by various countries. It is planned that ASELSAN will contribute to these studies, representing Turkey. In addition to the existing countries, the participation of England and Poland in these studies is on the agenda.
ASELSAN plays an active role in determining the scattering centers of the human aircraft with high precision with the RAPID software it has originally developed, and applying radar absorbing materials to the said areas. With the export permit obtained from the Ministry of National Defense, radar absorber material was developed by ASELSAN specifically for the studies. It has been shown that if the material is applied to the scattering centers of the platform, the radar cross-sectional area value can be reduced to one thousandth.
ASELSAN tarafından geliştirilen radar soğurucu malzemenin insansız hava aracının saçılım merkezlerine uygulanmasıyla radar kesit alanı değeri binde birine düşürülebildi. - Anadolu Ajansı
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