1 August, 2019 – A400M is now in service with Belgium, France, Germany, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey and the UK, supporting paratrooper deployment, transport and air-to-air refueling capabilities. Earlier this summer, OCCAR announced on 1 July that they signed a new performance-based support contract, creating a new partnership framework, based on pooling and sharing, where industry and operators have the opportunity to explore new areas of collaboration, concepts, and services.
Rohde & Schwarz is the communications supplier for the A400M aircraft with its MR6000A software defined radios (SDR) of the SOVERON family. Each aircraft is fitted with four VHF/UHF transceivers.
Rohde & Schwarz is the only provider of military airborne radios, which meet the civil aviation certification requirements of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Military aircraft can only be certified and operated without restrictions when they fulfil both military and civil requirements.
The R&S M3AR airborne transceiver uses state-of-the-art communications methods that were standardized throughout NATO, including the fast frequency-hopping technique SATURN (Second Generation of Anti-Jam Tactical UHF Radio for NATO), as well as embedded NATO cryptology. The R&S MR6000A has been SECAN and BSI certified to allow secure communications up to NATO secret. By means of software downloads, the transceivers can already implement important functions required during a mission. This ensures that, e.g. the A400 transport aircraft can be used in international air space under network centric warfare conditions. Almost 8,000 SDRs from the R&S M3AR airborne transceiver family are in use worldwide on over 70 different airborne platforms.
As a member of the SOVERON family, the R&S MR6000A covers a frequency range from 30-400 megahertz. The high transmit power of 20W in AM and 30W in FM mode ensures a long range, even in poor weather conditions or when flying at low levels. The extremely robust transceiver is accommodated in an ARINC 600 housing and offers outstanding RF parameters, such as high sensitivity and large-signal immunity. The R&S MR6000A is highly immune to radiated interference (e.g. from powerful broadcast transmitters or radar equipment) and to cosmic radiation. It contains filters to suppress shortwave and VHF interference as well as interfering signals in the same frequency band (co-site operation).
