Austrian air defense

Austrian air defence is undertaken by the integration of civilian and military radar systems under the authority of the Austrian Air Force.

Austrian air force roundel

General

In the past the control of the Austrian airspace took place by means of a single radarstation located on the summit of Kolomannsberg. This station was completed by two-dimensional radardata from civil airports and some mobile Bendix AN/TPS-1 searchradars.

Today the Austrian airspace control and its air defence is based on the Goldhaube system. Goldhaube is named after a traditional Austrian women's cap. Goldhaube is a combined military airspace commanding, controlling and alerting system that uses modern radar equipment to protect Austria’s airspace against any kind of intruders. The most important Goldhaube units are located on the summit of Kolomannsberg, Koralpe and Buschberg.

All systems are connected together in the Austrian Einsatzzentrale/Basisraum (EZ/B). This is the commandcentre and government crisesbunker, located 300m inside a mountain near the village of Heukareck in the vicinity of St. Johann and Salzburg. The bunker, known by insiders as "der Berg" (the mountain), was built in 1977-1982 and houses overall military and civilian leadership in case of war or crisis.

Although this system is already more than 20 years operational it is still being under extensive development. These upgrades assure that Goldhaube stays fully operational in the next decades.

Location of the Speikkogel radarstation on Koralpe summit

Timeline

By building a new radar in the south of Austria, by integration of the civil airport authorities in the military chain of command, by building an air operations centre and a backup centre, by totally renewing the Kolomannsberg radar station and by incorporating a datalink and communications network, a state of the art airspace control and air defence system would be at the disposal of the Austrian authorities.

Start of Goldhaube project

In 1973 a combined civil/military project Flugverkehrskontrolle - Luftraumüberwachung (airtraffic and airspace control) had been inaugurated to integrate both services in a combined one. As a direct consequence in 1975 the Stab Luftraum Beobachtungs System (aircontrol staff) had been activated in the Austrian air force.

From a military point of view the need of the actual target altitude as well as an extended view exceeding the Austrian boundaries was absolutely necessary. After the evaluation authorities confirmed the green light for a three-dimensional radar system in which distance, heading and altitude were incorporated in a single radar picture.

The Austrian military staff decided to buy the Italian Selenia RAT-31S / MRCS-403 instead of the American Westinghouse AN/TPS-43E system.

Although the new Selenia system technology suffered development problems in the mid-1980s, resulting in a delay of operational activation, the decision to buy the system has been proven to be the right one. Twenty years after operational activation of the first RAT-31S, Austria’s air control system is comparable with the very best air control systems and still meets the highest of standards.

Goldhaube operational elements

Alenia MRS1 station
Thales lowlevel detection radar

See also

References

  1. ↑ Swiss F-5 to Austrian Air Force, airpic.ch.

External links

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