History
AEROSTAR in Bacău began in the early 1950s as the Central Aviation Workshop for repairing military aircraft, which in April 1953 became the Uzina de Reparații Avioane (URA, aircraft repair works) [1]. It repaired aircraft and aircraft engines and made spare parts, aggregates, on-board instruments and special aviation tools; its radiolocation and on-board equipment testing sector opened in 1955 [1]. URA became Întreprinderea de Reparații Avioane (IRAv) Bacău, then Întreprinderea de Avioane (IAv) Bacău, and in 1991 SC AEROSTAR SA [1]. It moved from repairs to building aircraft, the IAR 93 military aircraft among them [1]. From the 1980s it researched and made ground and airborne electronic equipment, and in 1987 the FERA aviation radio-electronic equipment factory was set up in Bacău, with its own research and development centre [1]. After 1990, besides the MiG-21 LanceR programme, it started other modernisation programmes, was privatised and became a high-technology centre for civil aviation and defence [1].
Radar and IFF
At the end of the 1990s, at the request of the army’s equipment department (DIA), it developed modern identification friend-or-foe (IFF) systems on its own and in cooperation with Thomson (later Thales) of France [2]. It produced and integrated electronic, communication and IFF systems for air, land and naval platforms (interrogators, transponders, antennas, key carriers, crypto computers and control panels), compatible with the Mk XII A standard (Modes 1, 2, 3/A, C, 4 and S), and designed long-range ground interrogator platforms able to work with radars on the same site or on their own; a 2010 photograph shows a long-range IFF interrogator paired with a Soviet OBORONA-14 radar [1]. It repairs and modernises ground radar stations; its radar projects include the SRR-1 airborne responder, the ABA active jamming equipment, flexible waveguides made in aviation technology for radars such as the START-1M (late 1990s) and the modernisation of the Soviet ST-68U coherent digital 3D radar, in progress when the book was written [1].