TARES

The Rheinmetall Defense Electronics' TARES, stands after Tactical Advanced Recce Strike, is a state-of-the-art attack drone developed to meet the requirements of the German Army (Bundeswehr). It can stay on station for over four hours at distances of up to 200 kilometers. The TARES weapon system autonomously or by a remote ground controller tracks down, classifies and takes out enemy targets behind enemy lines. TARES builds on Taifun-RS attack drone but expanding capabilities to achieve unambiguous identification of targets, enabling the commander on the ground to decide at any time whether or not to engage a given target while minimizing collateral damage. To do so, TARES could add a data link or a n underside-mounted target sensor to its radar sensor head. A decision concerning TARES development will be made in May 2005 following Taifun-RS research and development effort completion. Objective TARES weapon system will provide ground operator with high resolution radar and infrared imagery of stationary and moving targets. This way, the operator can choose among correcting impact trajectory, switch targets or aborting the mission. This can be done trough existing technologies easy to implement, reliable and inexpensive. The resulting system will be able to operate in a wide range of scenarios from urban areas through conventional battlefields. The TARES system will consist of three workstations per computer, a standardized shelter, C3I (command, Control, Communications and Intelligence) data link and 16 TARES air vehicles. At this point, the air vehicles would be launched with a pre-programmed flight path then the ground control station will generate a mission plan that will be uploaded to the air vehicle. The air vehicle will be certified to take out field fortifications, air defense systems, artillery systems, tanks, helicopters, tactical bridging systems, infrastructure, convoys and other high value military assets. The first TARES technology demonstrator made its maiden flight on December 20, 2004, demonstrating high resolution imagery transmission, flight control functions as well as its aerodynamics characteristics. The aim of these test series is to determine how fits radar target sensor head with the infrared target sensor.

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