Integrated Total Signature Management - The Key To Improved Platform Survivability

Thales provide a complete Signature Management service, addressing all signatures throughout the platform development life cycle, and covering land, sea and air vehicle types.

In today's complex battle-space environment, where new sensors and networked target information create a more challenging operational arena for military platforms, increased survivability demands a new more integrated approach to total signature management for low observability (LO). In this field, the Thales Signature Management Team offers world-renowned expertise and capability to assist the platform designer at every stage of the product life cycle.

Achieving maximum platform survivability, whether for operation on land, at sea, or in the air, requires consideration of the total (multi-spectral) signature at the earliest point in the design process. It is at this stage that the cost of achieving LO is at its minimum and the ease with which it can be implemented is at a maximum.

Potential threat sensors exist across the full spectrum (from the lowest audible frequencies to the very highest frequencies associated with light). Denial of threat ability to detect or recognise the platform across this full frequency range is the principal aim of signature management, and it consequently forms the first and outermost protective layer in the so-called platform survivability "onion" model.

The principal signatures that must be managed are increasingly multi-spectral and may include some or all of the following at differing levels of importance depending on whether the platform is designed to operate in a land, sea, or air environment:

ABOVE WATER SIGNATURES

• Radar
• Infra-Red
• Radiated Noise
• Visual

BELOW WATER SIGNATURES

• Broadband, Narrowband & Transient Radiated Noise
• Target Echo Strength
• Ferromagnetic
• Corrosion Related Magnetic Field
• DC Electric Field
• Alternating Electric & Magnetic Fields

The management of total platform signature is a specialist design activity requiring the closest co-operation between the platform designer and signature expert. In the past, it has often been common practice to consider the individual signature components in isolation, resulting in potentially non-optimum trades between conflicting spectral requirements at a late stage in the design. However, it is the simultaneous achievement of both signature reduction and balancing the relevant spectral contributions that is important in management of total signature that will lead to improved survivability against modern threat sensors.

Only by management of the overall total signature is it possible to provide the best protection against detection / identification, and hence prevent or delay engagement by hostile threats which increasingly will be employing multiple sensors either directly or via network enabled capability.

THE THALES SIGNATURE MANAGEMENT TEAM

In order to provide the most comprehensive service possible the Thales Signature Management Team (Thales Team) draws together complementary skills from across the Company and from other expert organisations, to offer a complete through-life total signature management capability.

Thales Communications UK brings over 40 years experience in working directly with the UK Ministry of Defence and industry in the field of signatures and it provides the overall lead and expertise necessary to achieve management of total signature goals.

The other members of the Thales Team are: Thales Underwater Systems, S&C Thermofluids Ltd, MIRA Ltd, and WR Davis Engineering Ltd, and each of these organisations brings specialised expertise in particular areas of the spectrum. A complete multi-spectral signature management service is offered, encompassing consultancy, prediction, measurement and training services throughout all stages of platform design and performance verification.