Rapid in-theatre deployment is a vital requirement that tactical communications must meet for today's armed forces. Perhaps more than ever before, troops on the ground have to be highly mobile, flexible and responsive to a wide variety of battlefield threats, including new technologies that enable opposing forces to remotely monitor their activities and target their operations.
Designed especially to answer such needs, Cobham Antenna Systems (part of Cobham Aerospace Connectivity) has developed the capability to manufacture and supply a range of rugged, lightweight antenna and mast packages that are easy to erect and dismantle, and contained in their own tough and portable casing.
The example that Cobham recently exhibited at this year's Eurosatory in Paris and the DVD exhibition at the Millbrook Proving Grounds near Bedford, UK, features an omnidirectional Link-16 antenna and a lightweight telescopic composite field-mast extensible to up to 9.5m.
With carry cases, the kit includes all the necessary ancillary equipment: Link-16 bandpassers and notch-filters; interface cables; mast guys and pegs; and a lightning arrestor.
The telescopic mast is designed to carry a range of Cobham's antennas - its accurately calculated and managed wind-loading enables it to elevate sizeable band 4 point-to-point antennas (as pictured here, deployed in the field), and point-tomulti- point sectors, as well as the exhibited Link- 16 omnidirectional 7dBi-gain XVO7-960-1215/2374.
