EW Live Tartu, a lively exercise: ERA presented its passive surveillance systems. In the most active way possible!

“Where signals speak and you understand their language!” The Czech company ERA introduced its unique passive surveillance and reconnaissance systems as part of the iconic event for the Electronic Warfare community “EW Live 2025” in Tartu, Estonia. The ERA team focused on a live demonstration of its latest product EW-EDMT - Data Management Toolkit for Electromagnetic Warfare.

This year’s demo days EW Live brought together 44 companies and 38 NATO/allied military delegations, all sharing the latest in cutting-edge EW technologies. The ERA team presented its passive surveillance solutions to a number of foreign delegations at the ERA exhibition stand and in the Live Demo tent at Tartu Airfield and in focused lectures in the classroom of the Estonian Aviation Academy.

ERA views EW LIVE as a truly special event and provided its visitors with several highlights:

• Live demonstration of the new ERA product called EW-EDMT (Electromagnetic Warfare ERA Data Management Toolkit) for management of ESM databases and automated data processing
• Remote live operations of ERA passive sensors VERA-NG and PLESS:

VERA-NG: an iconic Passive ESM Tracker (PET), broadly recognised worldwide

PLESS (Passive Long-range ESM Surveillance System): an Over-the-Horizon Direction Finder, intended for signal detection hundreds of kilometres from the emitter.

“We at ERA believe that: ‘Seeing is believing and that is exactly why we absolutely love EW Live. All the delegations, having come to Tartu, had a unique opportunity to witness a live demonstration of ERA land-based passive surveillance sensors, namely VERA-NG and PLESS. We also presented our new SW tools in support of the Electro-magnetic Support Operation (EMSO), especially EW-EDMT by ERA,” stated Jakub Thomas, ERA Commercial Director.

The demo companies and exhibitors delivered live demonstrations and created new opportunities for collaboration and Innovation between producers and end-users. The event was concluded with a gala dinner at the Estonian National Museum and Estonia's Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur reminded the participants of the urgency facing the defence community: “We do not want to be in a situation where solutions arrive in ten years. In electronic warfare, we need capabilities now and we have to maintain the pace.”

On EW-EDMT by ERA

The new ERA product EW-EDMT is a comprehensive tool for processing ELINT/ESM data throughout the entire intelligence cycle with an emphasis on post-mission analysis. Its main purpose is to determine identification of targets such as the platform, emitter and emitter mode.

The system user extracts information from the collected data and converts, processes, filters, identifies and stores them. The aim of the post-mission analysis is to build and expand the reference database to improve target identification and further increase automation of the process. The typical end users of the EW- EDMT application are mission planners, intel analysts, signal analysts and the database administrators responsible for the creation of the national ESM database.