ERA's demonstrator in mobile wagon called Silent Guard is another significant milestone in MSPSR technology development project and has already demonstrated its capabilities. ERA participated in a military exercise on the Western Bohemian border a month ago.

“The aim was to demonstrate passive systems capability for detecting a variety of targets with different flight behaviours. ERA provided coverage of the training with an online target data transfer from PCL as well as PET (VERA-NG) systems for four days during the trials. It was the first actual usage of those two combined systems ever,” stated Vojtech Stejskal, head of ERA's R&D team.

Long term experience with military Electronic Support Measurement (ESM) systems such as Tamara and the recent VERA-NG has served as motivation for ERA Company to continue with research dedicated to primary passive radar – technology usually known as PCL, or in EUROCONTROL terminology, MSPSR passive. In contrast to an ESM system such as VERA-NG which exploits a different kind of signal emissions generated by a target, PCL utilises a reflected signal and is therefore able to detect not only non-cooperative but also non-emitting targets by means of a Bistatic Radar principle.

The PCL system is based on a bistatic radar, since the receiver and transmitter are spatially separated. The bistatic configuration is particularly suitable for detection of targets with small RCS and the property of non-electromagnetic emissions which makes them undetectable. The design of the target is devoted to minimizing signal reflections in the direction of illumination. If the transmitter is spatially separated from the receiver, these techniques are naturally less effective and detections become easier.