That is funny you wrote that, I was reading that article earlier. A couple of clarifications:
DDM-NG has the inherent capability to provide tracking function (apart from missile warning, where the missile came from and direction to employ countermeasures) as any staring IR MAWS with sufficient resolution/FoV would, but the article stops short of saying it would provide hostile target tracking for aircraft. Only that:
According to MBDA. Your commentary suggests that there is more functionality, with qualifiers. I am curious if there was more discussion”off the record” that led to those conclusions, or that was the impression you got.
Second, due to it’s drop in integration with SPECTRA, does that means that video feed is not shared? In essence, Spectra provides the mission computers with data of where a target is but not the imaging?
Lastly, the article leads the reader to believe that (like DAS) many of the functions (classification, hostile ground fire detection) are possible with software upgrades due to the FoV and resolution but unlike DAS assigning target tracks and fusing target information with other sensors is not possible as of yet?
Yes there were discussions off the record. Eg. A whole part of the article was deleted (identification of sensor involved and analysis of the wavebands used ; and therefore the heat it is optimized for… ). On the other hand it allowed me to get official confirmations. :
Il participe directement aux capacités de détection, d’identification et de ciblage du Rafale.
.
DDM-NG HAD to be plug and play replacement of DDM. Therefore its full spectrum of capabilities is not used on present production planes. Accidentally i asked to a Istres test pilot about displaying of DDM-NG 3 days ago, he answered me that DDM-NG images were classified. Afaik the only two released are the ones posted in the article. It is fairly difficult to get good infos about Rafale evolutions, DGA is very secrecive.
Vianney Riler Jr confirmed me that IR channel was involved in his 6o’clock shot. But one should take in account that he was flying B-301 in Istres, experimental Rafale for future technology. And disposed of an evolution of SPECTRA. Spectra 5T will be implemented on F3R standard. And will allow a much wider use of DDM-NG. Atm, informations from DDM-NG are fused to other plane sensors, but i don’t think it can really track by itself a target (imprecision of my previous post)
Real step ahead will come with F3R , spectra 5T…(unpublicizly F3R ismostly focused on networking, IFDL, directional Satcom, SDR etc.) and tragedac (intraflight sharing datas between passive sensors).
Thx for reading our website 😉
Sign In
