Indra will supply the CH-47F Chinook helicopters of the Spanish Army’s Airmobile Force (FAMET) with Talium, an advanced mission planning system, following a contract award totaling 15 million euros from the Directorate General of Armaments and Material (DGAM).
Talium is designed to greatly increase the efficiency and safety of helicopters operating in complex scenarios. It can also easily manage huge data volumes to plan and conduct missions in increasingly uncertain environments.
In operational terms, the system supports the decision-making by helping to determine the units, resources and logistical support required to carry out the operation, regardless of its size and complexity. It also sequences the actions to complete and defines the hierarchical structure.
On a tactical level, it analyzes the flight plan defined by the user and the potential threats it may encounter, optimizing the configuration of key logistical and tactical aspects related to the helicopter’s load, electronic defense and navigation, cabin configuration and fuel and helping the commanders determine the feasibility of the mission. The system can even calculate the flight profile to be followed to prevent attacks and facilitate the communications plans by choosing the frequencies, coverages and types of links to be used.
According to Indra, Talium is ready to be installed in different configurations at command and control centers deployed in the field. Its most basic functions can also be controlled via a rudimentary computer or the aircraft’s own mission system. Once the ground planning has been completed, the data is uploaded onto the aircraft, which is then ready to fly.
When the mission is executed, depending on the availability of the data link, the system permits the aircraft to exchange real-time critical data with the command center and other allied platforms, thus contributing to maintaining an updated operational picture and reinforcing the coordination and safety of all the participants.
The solution can also be integrated into the BMS (battlefield management system), national and NATO command and control systems, air defense systems, IFF and simulators. Its integration into the Chinook CH47F will multiply the benefits when it comes to managing joint and multi-platform missions. Talium is a scalable and modular solution that can evolve to integrate new platforms and become a unified system for the joint operation of the entire fleet.
Raúl Pajarín, Indra’s Airborne Platforms Director, said: “The implementation of Talium constitutes a huge leap forward in the Army’s digitization. Beyond the aircraft’s characteristics, it will be its intelligence capacity to prepare and conduct missions, as well as the capacity to operate in a network, exchanging data and information with the rest of the force, which will endow it with the superiority in the field that it needs.”
Logistics 4.0 to stay ahead of requirements
Indra believes Talium goes far beyond the capabilities of traditional mission systems, as it has been developed to cover the comprehensive management of the entire operation. To do so, it incorporates logistics 4.0 capabilities enabling it to process and analyze high volumes of data downloaded from the platform so as to monitor its health status and in-flight performance. The management of these processes significantly reduces the logistics footprint by streamlining the deployment of the aircraft anywhere on the planet.
With this contract, Indra will reinforce its leadership of the development of the new generation of command and control systems. It currently leads the development of the future European strategic command and control system (ESC2), which will coordinate the joint military operations of member countries, while it has also implemented anti-aircraft command defense systems and battlefield management systems.
