Cassidian, the defence and security division of EADS, introduces a new security radar into the market which opens up completely new opportunities for the wide-area protection of coastlines, maritime infrastructure and harbours against asymmetric threats. As part of Cassidian's SPEXER security radar family, the new SPEXER 2000 Coastal has been launched during the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace (LIMA) exhibition in Malaysia.

"SPEXER 2000 Coastal is the worldwide first security radar using the latest radar technology of Active Electronically Scanning Array (AESA) which provides a multi-tasking and multi-mode capability and increases the detection and target assessment capability substantially", explained Elmar Compans, Head of Cassidian Sensors and Electronic Warfare.

"Therefore, one SPEXER 2000 Coastal can replace two or more conventional radars", he said.

SPEXER 2000 Coastal is a security radar optimized for the surveillance of coastal areas and maritime infrastructure such as oil fields and harbours. With an instrumented range of 21.6 NM (40 km), its high Doppler and velocity resolution as well as its high sea clutter suppression, it is able to detect, track and classify even very small and slowly moving objects such as swimmers and rubber dinghies, but also fast objects such as speed boats.

Due to a unique signal processing architecture, the SPEXER 2000 Coastal is able to reliably detect sea, land and air targets. Hence, in case the scenario makes it necessary, the deployment of different sensors for simultaneous land and sea surveillance is not necessary any more. In addition, a camera can be cued to the radar in order to identify suspicious objects.

This ensures a superior surveillance performance and a high level of situational awareness providing security forces in a littoral environment with additional reaction time towards illicit intrusions.

The SPEXER 2000 Coastal is part of Cassidian's SPEXER security radar family which consists of several sensors, each optimized for specific applications in the fields of border, infrastructure, perimeter and coastal surveillance.

A specific version for border surveillance, SPEXER 2000, is under production for a huge border surveillance system in the Middle East; a military version has been developed for the German Army