UK MoD research developing integrated aircraft defences

Future aircraft, including UAVs, could integrate current and new technologies for sensing and reacting to airborne threats as part of a single system under development at the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).

This would allow air forces to more easily upgrade existing vehicles with new technology and more easily reprogram such defensive aids systems (DAS) for different missions.

The system, referred to as a common defensive aids systems (CDAS), would also mean the MoD would be able to more fully exploit competition in the defence market because technologies built by different contractors could be used together.

‘While we would hope this new architecture would go into any new platform coming along, the essential feature of this design is that it is totally compatible with existing platforms,’ DSTL’s principal engineer on the project, Peter Haynes, told The Engineer.

‘By putting in the CDAS spine concept you can then introduce new functionality very flexibly, but we don’t need to rip out all the wiring and all the infrastructure of the existing subsystems.’