Establishment of the air situation and approach control at the military airbases
With the installation of the last of five airport surveillance radars at the Payerne, Meiringen, Emmen, Zurich and Sion airports, armasuisse achieved an important milestone in the project «Military Approach Control System Plus (MALS Plus)» and the systems could be handed over to the customer and enter into operational service.
Urs Mundwiler, specialised area Command and Control Systems, competence domain Command and Control + Reconnaissance Systems
Financial credits for the «MALS Plus» project to install military approach control systems at the military airbases in Payerne, Emmen, Locarno, Meiringen and Sion were granted with the armament programme 09. The installation of the last system component (surveillance radar) was completed at the end of 2022 at Sion airbase.
The approach control systems consist of three components:
- a precision approach radar (PAR), consisting of the sensor and its control display
- an airport surveillance radar (ASR), consisting of the sensor and its control display
- and the direction finders (DF).
The direction finders and the precision approach radars were installed at the airports earlier and function perfectly.
The surveillance radar consists of a sensor from the company Hensoldt in Germany, as well as a display from the company Frequentis Comsoft GmbH in Germany and replaces the FLUR radar, while the precision approach radar from the company Leonardo in Italy replaced the obsolete QUADRADAR system at the military airbases.
Milestone 50 is planned for mid-2023 and the project team is in the final stages of work on the MALS Plus project.