EF2000 PIRATE test flights campaign

Abstract

The PIRATE, short for Passive Infra Red Airborne Tracking Equipment, multi mode Infrared Sensor, has been developed and manufactured by the Eurofirst consortium. The consortium is led by SELEX Galileo, contract award since 1992, from Italy, and includes THALES UK, and TECNOBIT from Spain. At the end of the development phase, a three years flight test campaign has started in 2005, and has been carried out involving Eurofighter partner companies, as flight trials responsible, like ALENIA in Turin (FLIR flight testing leading company), BAE SYSTEM in Warton, and EADS in Manching, highlighting the functionality and the performance of the unit, when operating in real scenarios, with cooperative target and TOO (target of opportunity), across different weather conditions, like clean sky, but also misty and cloudy weather, haze and hail, generally not ideal to the infrared wavelength operation, either during tracking or imaging.