The ONERA has a new flying testbed

This is before an audience made up of industrial researchers, officers of the Air Force and journalists that Onera officially celebrated today the receipt of a new way of testing installed in the center of the BA 701 Salon de Provence. The latter, called Ramses NG is a Dassault Mystère 20 modified to carry two underwing pods containing various radar and optronic sensors. Ramses NG is actually an evolution of Ramses radar imaging system (Airborne Multispectral Radar Signatures studies), arrested in 2008, and was a Transall platform. Good service at ONERA, the plane belongs to the DGA Flight Testing.

The mission of Ramses NG test new ways for the detection of DGA and industrialists. For this, it carries X-band radar sensors, L, UHF, a camera and a hyperspectral camera context.

Combine imaging radar (detection by electromagnetic waves) and hyperspectral imaging (Taking several images of the same scene in several wavelengths) would, according Onera unprecedented operational capabilities: detection of targets in vegetation cover, weapons caches or IED buried under the sand , knowing the route taken by a vehicle or "décamoufler" a tank hidden in the edge of a wood, etc..Laboratory Onera even think that thanks to Ramses NG it would be possible to design systems able to detect chemical weapons factories!

Currently difficult to know what will be the first mission of this plane, which has been operational since last October. A Onera we talk carefully a series of tests on behalf of the DGA ... However, the French lab does not hide that could NG Ramses in the near future, contribute to the development of sensors for a drone French or European.