Kolchuga passive sensor
The Kolchuga system (Russian Кольчуга for " coat of mail ") is a passive working radio measurement monitoring system ( SIGINT) from the Ukrainian company Topaz. The unit collects, analyzes and identifies the manufacturer of virtually all existing emitters in aircraft such as radio, radar, TACAN navigation, communications, and radar altimeter.
The system receives and processes signals in a range of 130 MHz to 18 GHz, without transmitting an active, making it difficult to locate the plant. The system is brought to 6 three -wheeled trucks. On a fourth truck, the systems and computers are for signal processing. The individual trucks are normally positioned at a distance of 60 km from each other. However, this results in the problem of data transmission to the other systems, since in such a cabling distances is expensive and greatly reduced mobility. Therefore, in the normal case, an omni-directional transmit and receive antenna is used for transmission, which can be located by the enemy, however SIGINT systems. On every vessel in each case four antennas are for the bands VHF, UHF and SHF, with which in a 1-5 ° wide sector of up to 600 km and at a 45 ° wide sector emitting at 200 km goals can be sought.
According manufacturers are also destinations with stealth characteristics can be detected and tracked. With the passive search methods, according to the manufacturer, the electromagnetic radiation of a stealth fighter jet at a distance of 20 - 200 km are recorded. However, such aircraft emit normally no electromagnetic signals, so that the efficiency of the system is questionable against such targets. Normal fighters and bombers should be able to be located at a distance of up to 600 km, at altitudes above 10 km and 1000 km. This can be pursued simultaneously up to 32 targets. The range is almost twice as high as AWACS (600 miles)
The Kolchuga monitoring system was first introduced on the IDEF - arms fair in Turkey in 1999. The improved Kolchuga -M system is offered on the export market for sale since 2001.