Thales to deliver Squire radars to Norway

14 February 2013 Thales

Stuttgart, 14 February, 2013 - Thales and Vinghøg AS, a Norwegian subsidiary of Rheinmetall Defence, signed a contract for the delivery of 44 Squire battlefield surveillance radars, to be deployed by the Norwegian Armed Forces. The first 10 systems will be delivered in the second half of 2013. The last delivery is scheduled for beginning of 2017.

The Norwegian Armed Forces will receive an updated version of Squire, which incorporates a new processor board that enables various new features to be built into the system. The client has selected Squire for various tasks. The majority of these radars will be mounted on Vingtaqs II (Long range Surveillance, Observation and Reconnaissance System) fitted to armored vehicles.

Peter Obermark, CEO of Thales Deutschland is proud of this contract: “With our radars BOR-A, Squire and GO12 Thales GSR is the most successful battlefield surveillance radar supplier world-wide. With this contract Thales has sold more than 400 Squires which are manufactured in Hengelo, NL and more than 300 BOR-A. Thales’ ground surveillance radars are operational all over the world.”

About Squire

Squire is a man-portable medium-range ground surveillance radar that can detect and classify moving targets on, or close to, the ground at ranges up to 48 km. Squire consists of compact components to be carried in backpacks.. Squire is light, compact, and has a very low output power thanks to the application of FMCW technology. Squire features the Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar principle for very low Probability of Intercept. With only one Watt output power, Squire is capable of detecting walking persons at ranges of 10 km. The low power output makes the system virtually undetectable. Squire features automatic target classification facilities for persons, wheeled vehicles, tracked vehicles and helicopters. The solid state techniques that are applied result in very high reliability and low life cycle cost.