When Reutech Radar Systems was set up in 1987, under its original name ESD South (ESD was a subsidiary of the then Barlow Rand group, since ‘unbundled’), its first programme was Project Hexagon, which the company consciously used to develop a profound understanding of (then) modern radar technology. Hexagon was a project of Armscor to develop a compact vehicle-mounted aircraft warning radar, operating in the L-band – that is, in the 1 GHz to 2 GHz radio frequency band; this is a relatively low frequency band. (Armscor is South Africa’s defence procurement and research and development agency; in the 1980s, its also operated defence manufacturing plants, which were later split away and formed into the Denel group.)

“Our basic approach had the long-term goal to master radar technology at a fundamental level,” recount PW van der Walt and Lia Labuschagne in their recently published history of the company, RRS: 25 Years of Innovation 1987-2012. “We designed circuitry from scratch, rather than using bought-in modules as building blocks. While this approach may have been more expensive in the short term, it paid dividends in the long run. Not only did we master the technology, we also ended up with subsystems that we could very easily adapt for different requirements.”

The company approached Hexagon by dividing the project into different subsystems, which were developed in parallel. These were signal and data processor, antenna, power amplifier, radio frequency front end, low-frequency synthesiser and up-converter, high-frequency synthesiser and the receiver, and mechanical design. These were all executed in line with a system block diagram and under supervision to ensure that all the subsystems could be successfully integrated into an operational system that would meet specifications.

Progress was neither smooth nor easy but, by the end of 1987, initial prototypes for most of the subsystems had been developed. During 1988, improved prototypes were developed and the integration of a complete radar system was started before the end of that year. In the first third of 1989, the transmitter and receiver were integrated and tested. Although the mechanical work on the antenna mounting had not been finished, the radar detected its first aircraft – a helicopter – in May of that year, with two engineers holding the antenna! But the war in Angola ended and Hexagon (along with the vehicle that was meant to carry it) was cancelled.

“It did leave a tremendous legacy, though,” point out Van der Walt and Labuschagne. “Where we started off with nothing, we now had several subsystems that could be used as building blocks for future radars. Looking back, the spin-offs produced by this first radar project were quite remarkable.”

Even before the end of Project Hexagon, the subsystems developed for it were already being applied in another project, Contain (which became Contain I and Contain II). This was for a mobile medium-range surveillance radar to be mounted in an armoured cabin carried by a 20 t truck. The result was the Kameelperd (giraffe) radar, designated ESR 220 by the company. Also operating in the L-band, the first prototype was delivered in 1992, followed by the deliveries of production units. In radar terms, it is basically an upscaled Hexagon. Continuously improved, it is now, following a major upgrade, called the Thutlwa (which also means ‘giraffe’), in the South African National Defence Force service. “RRS had demonstrated the company’s capabilities through the successful delivery of the Kameelperd system to the Air Defence Artillery Formation,” note Van der Walt and Labuschagne.