Indra progresses Scepter project to develop radioelectric capabilities for European aircraft

A file photo opf a Spanish Eurofighter. Spain's Indra is now leading an international effort dubbed Scepter to develop radioelectric capabilities for European aircraft. (Janes/Gareth Jennings)

Indra is progressing its effort to equip European military aircraft with a fully integrated ‘radioelectric' capability via the Scepter project.

The company announced on 27 April that through Scepter it is now leading an international conglomerate of 14 organisations from nine European countries. This builds on its previous research, development and innovation (RDI) work on the Crown project, which was an initiative selected by the EU within the Preparatory Action for Defence Research (PADR) programme.

“[Indra] is leading the European RDI project Scepter, an initiative financed by the European Defence Fund (EDF) aimed at boosting the development of this type of new generation system based on active electronically scanned array (AESA) electronic scanning technology, which replaces traditional architectures based on different sensors to handle each function,” the Spanish company said.

“In this project, as previously in the Crown project, both funded by the European Commission and led by Indra Group, the technological foundations of multifunction radio frequency systems (MFRFS) are being built, in key areas such as broadband AESA antennas, direct signal digitisation and advanced resource management. The goal is to respond to the increasing complexity and saturation of the electromagnetic environment, multi-domain scenarios, and the need to reduce the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of defence platforms, especially critical in aircraft, to provide an operational advantage against the enemy,” it added.

As noted in the announcement, Scepter aims to develop a multi-function European system capable of, simultaneously and in a coordinated manner, carrying out detection, electronic protection and communications missions.