DRDO's Center for Airborne Systems (CABS) has engaged EADS defense unit Cassidian to help with the system integration and flight testing of India’s Airborne Early Warning & Control (AEW&C) platform. The AEW&C is scheduled to be integrated on a modified Embraer EMB-145 aircraft later this year. The Indian air force is set to commission three AEW&C platforms by 2013, with the first flight expected this May. A senior CABS official tells Aviation Week that Cassidian was brought in as a consultant in January. “Many complex systems will have integration issues and get bogged down by protracted flight testing and evaluation,” the official says. “We hope to dovetail the experience of the Cassidian team into the program so as to compress time schedules.” The Cassidian team is expected to stay with CABS until the end of the program. “They are helping us in evolving [the] most optimized ways of testing the systems,” the official says. (Full report in AW)[Limited updates on blog till June-end]
