07/06/2024 Thales Group

Sous l’égide du ministère des Armées français, le ministère de la Défense ukrainien a signé un contrat pour la fourniture d’un second système complet de défense aérienne Thales pour protéger l’Ukraine.

Ce système de défense aérienne comporte un ControlMaster 200 (CM 200) incluant un radar Ground Master 200 de surveillance aérienne, un système de communications radio, un centre de commandement et de contrôle (C2) ControlView, ainsi qu’un terminal portable d’allocation d’armes.

Thales est l’industriel européen de référence pour l’intégration de systèmes de systèmes. Ses technologies de défense aérienne protègent de tous les types de menaces sur la totalité de l’espace aérien. Elles couvrent toute la chaîne de décision, de la détection, à l’identification jusqu’à la neutralisation.

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November 13, 2015: Strategy Page

Satellite photos indicate that the UAE (United Arab Emirates) is withdrawing its Hawk air defense missile batteries (acquired in the 1980s) and replacing them with Patriot batteries. UAE first ordered Patriot in 2001. Six air defense missile sites are now missing there Hawk equipment and appear to have Patriots. Each Patriot battery is manned by about a hundred troops and contains a radar plus four launchers. A battery can fire two types of Patriot missile. The $4 million PAC 3 missile is smaller than the cheaper anti-aircraft version (PAC 2), thus a Patriot launcher can hold sixteen PAC 3 missiles, versus four PAC 2s. A PAC 2 missile weighs about a ton, a PAC 3 weighs about a third of that. The PAC 3 has a shorter range (about 20 kilometers) versus 96 kilometers for the anti-aircraft version. While each Patriot launcher, loaded with PAC 3 missiles, can only defend against ballistic missiles approaching within 20 kilometers, the Patriot radar can detect targets out to a hundred kilometers. Two PAC 3 missiles are fired at each incoming ballistic missile, to increase the probability of a hit. The PAC 3 missile has its own radar, and uses it to track the incoming warhead, and execute a collision course. The UAE apparently sent at least one Patriot battery into Yemen with UAE ground troops helping the government there fight Iran backed Shia rebels. UAE was also seen using at least two S340 airborne radar aircraft in Yemen.

The UAE is doing a lot more to upgrade its air defenses. In 2013 the UAE ordered 17 French Ground Master 200 (GM200) portable radars. The system fits in a standard 20 foot shipping container and weighs less than ten tons. It is carried on one 6x6 truck. This is an AESA radar that can be set up by a four man crew in 30 minutes. It can detect aircraft at up to 250 kilometers and locate them accurately enough for targeting at 100 kilometers. Aircraft can be seen at up to 25.8 kilometers (80,000 feet) altitude. The entire system will, on average, operate for several thousand hours before experiencing a failure. The radar can also track incoming mortar shells but not ballistic missiles. The UAE is using the GM200 to better coordinate its several different anti-aircraft systems (Improved Hawk, Rapier, Crotale, Patriot, NASAM, and Avenger) all of which can use real-time data from these radars. Each GM200 system cost about $23 million and will further enhance UAE defenses against Iranian attack.

October 31, 2015: Strategy Page

In late 2015 Russia announced another upgrade for their 30 year old  Tor-M (SA-15) air defense missile system. This one enables the launcher vehicle to fire its guided missiles while on the move. The latest version of Tor is the Tor-M2U. The Tor-M missiles can hit aircraft up to 12 kilometers away and cruise missiles at a distance of five kilometers. The missile launcher vehicle has a crew of thee (commander, driver and missile systems operator). 176 kg (378 pound) missiles are three meters (ten feet) long, 235mm (9.25 inches) in diameter and carry a 15 kg (33 pound). Each battery has search radar and command center vehicles, and controls four launcher vehicles (each carrying eight missiles, and another radar.)

The original tracking radar on the missile vehicle could track one target at a time but the latest (Tor-M2) can track four at a time. Missiles can be launched from the vehicle at three second intervals.

The original missile carrier/launcher vehicle was armored (against small arms and shell fragments), tracked and weighed 34 tons. Since then a cheaper towed (on a wheeled trailer) version has appeared followed by a version on a 6x6 truck that proved more maneuverable, comfortable and cheaper than the armored version.

Russia is the original user but Tor-M has also been exported to Greece, Venezuela, China, Iran and Egypt

March 17, 2015 By Andrew Chuter – Defense News

LONDON — Britain has taken a significant step toward updating its air defenses on the Falkland Islands by kick-starting a competition to supply a key element of a new ground-based system.

Defence Ministry officials recently briefed industry on its requirements for a battle management C4I system and have triggered the process toward selecting a contractor to do the work by issuing a pre-qualification questionnaire.

An MoD spokesman declined to confirm the system is destined for the Falkland Islands, saying that commenting on deployment details is "inappropriate" at this time.

Industry sources, though, said the BMC4I system is scheduled to head to the British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, some 300 miles off the coast of Argentina.

Britain and Argentina fought a bloody war over the islands in 1982 and the dispute concerning sovereignty of the territory, known in Buenos Aires as the Malvinas, continues to rumble on diplomatically.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Saab were among the companies known to have attended the February briefing by the British MoD.

The contract comes in what the British call its B1 funding category, which means the value of the BMC4I deal lays somewhere between £100 million (US $147 million) and £250 million.

The command-and-control system will be part of an air defense system that will include a new ground-to-air missile being developed by MBDA and Saab's Giraffe radar, which is already in service with the British military.

The MoD spokesman said the BMC4I-based requirement is in the assessment phase with the contract award to go ahead, known here as the main gate decision, by May 2016.

He declined to give an in-service date for the system.

However, the MoD's Contract Bulletin reports that the winning contractor will have to provide five years of initial support in a contract set to end in 2025.

The British Army recently received the last unit of a similar ground-based air defense system from Lockheed Martin, known as Land Environment Air Picture Provision, or LEAPP.

The spokesman said LEAPP hadn't been considered because the new requirement involved additional capabilities.

"The potential threat posed to our forces from air platforms and their munitions has evolved and the system required must interact with the Future Local Area Air Defence System (FLAADS) (Land) and G-AMB radar system, meaning it needs a solution incorporating additional capabilities (like weapon control) for which LEAPP was not designed," he said.

LEAPP achieved full operating capability in December and the spokesman said reliability and functionality of the system is exemplary.

Britain awarded missile-maker MBDA a £228 million contract in December to develop the FLAADS (Land) weapon system.

The new weapon is destined to replace the long-serving Rapier anti-air missile as part of the Falklands ground-based defenses and in other British Army units by 2020.

With an aging Air Force, Argentina poses no threat to the islands, which are guarded by a small force of Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters and ground-based assets.

The Argentineans, though, have been trying, so far without success, to modernize a force that consists of Mirage III, Super Entendard and Nesher combat jets.

January 24, 2015: Strategy Page

Russia recently revealed that it had sold China six battalions of its new S-400 anti-aircraft missile system. Each battalion will cost $500 million and includes training as well as spare parts and additional missiles. Each S-400 battalion has eight launchers, each with two missiles, plus a control center and radar and 16 missiles available as reloads. All equipment is mobile. S-400 is also known as the S-300PMU-3, SA-21 or Triumf and was renamed S-400 because it turned out to be far more than just another upgrade of the S-300 and was considered sufficiently different to warrant a name upgrade. Russia deployed its first S-400 battalion in 2010, around Moscow.

The S-400 is similar to the U.S. Patriot and pays particular attention to electronic countermeasures that the Americans might have, or be developing. The missiles are also physically larger and have longer range as well as being very expensive. Russia began seeking export sales in 2011. The S-400 missiles weigh 1.8 tons each and are 8.4 meters (26 feet) long and about 50cm (20 inches) in diameter. The missiles have a range of some 400 kilometers, and can hit targets as high as 31,000 meters (100,000 feet). The missile has a 145.5 kg (320 pound) warhead. The target acquisition radar has a range of 700 kilometers. The missiles are built to last for 15 years before needing refurbishment.

The S-400 has over twice the range of the U.S. Patriot, weighs twice as much and claims the ability to detect stealthy aircraft. The S-400 also has an anti-missile capability, which is limited to shorter range (3,500 kilometers) ballistic missiles that are within 60 kilometers of an S-400 launcher. That would mean a warhead coming in at about 5,000 meters a second (the longer the range of a ballistic missile, the higher its re-entry speed.)

The S-400 system actually has two types of missiles, one of them being smaller, with a shorter range (120 kilometers). These are deployed four to a launcher, like all other S-300 systems. The larger missile actually has two versions, one with a range of 250 kilometers and a more expensive one with a range of 400 kilometers. The S-400 has no combat experience, but U.S. intelligence believes that the tests these systems have undergone indicate it is a capable air defense weapon. Just how capable won't be known until it actually gets used in combat.

Russia plans to buy up to 200 launchers (each with two or four missiles) by 2015, and phase out the older S-300 and S-200 systems. This would mean deploying at least 18 battalions by 2017 and 56 by 2020 (or organized into 28 battalions containing two battalions each).  China plans to deploy its first S-400 battalion opposite Taiwan. That one battalion can cover all Taiwanese air space. The next battalions will be deployed to deal with Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

September 9, 2014: Strategy Page

It turns out that very detailed, and workable, “how to” instructions on how to operate a Russian Buk anti-aircraft missile system are available on the Internet. This discovery came about because on July 17th pro-Russian rebels shot down a Malaysian airliner that was passing over Ukraine. The official Russian line was that the destruction of the Malaysian airliner was all a CIA plot to discredit Russia and justify NATO expansion and that the rebels did not have people competent to operate the Buk. But satellite photos showed a BUK vehicle hastily moving towards the Russian border after the 17th, with two of its four missiles missing. Ukraine also captured radio traffic featuring rebels talking about shooting down a Ukrainian transport on the 17th.

There was no evidence that Russia ordered the airliner shot down. The rebels who fired the missiles appear to have believed they were firing at another Ukrainian military aircraft. One of those (an An-26) had been shot down in June by the rebels using Buk. Ukraine did later record some rebel radio chatter of the “oops” variety when the rebels realized that an airliner carrying 298 people had been brought down rather than another An-26. That was obvious when the wreckage, which fell into a rebel controlled area of Donbas, was examined by rebel gunmen.  

Russia claimed a Ukrainian fighter shot down the airliner, which may be why the rebels kept international investigators away from the crash site for so long. Russian aviation experts knew that when the wreckage was carefully examined parts of the missile that brought down the airliner would be found and identified. Photos of the wreckage soon appeared showing damage characteristic of what a 9&<052;38 BUK missile warhead would inflict. The 9&<052;38 has 1 70 kg (154 kg) warhead and a proximity fuze that detonates the warhead close to the target and sprays the target with a unique form of metal fragments

Western intelligence services believe the Buk M1 anti-aircraft vehicle that fired the two missiles was one of the 60 BUK self-propelled systems Ukraine was known to own. It was believed that some of these were captured by the rebels in Donbas and put to use with the help of Russian experts. Later it was found that instructions could be downloaded from the Internet. The catch here was that while these instructions allowed anyone with access to the equipment, and willing to spend a few hours learning the drill (what buttons to push and when) could actually use the radar and fire control system to fire the missile so that it would bring down an aircraft within range. Normally it takes over two months of formal training for a Buk operator. But the formal course also teaches useful things like how to tell a civilian airliner from a military transport. Faster isn’t always cheaper.

March 26 (UPI)

Israel Aerospace Industries reports it is supplying dual-use civilian and military airspace control and protection radars to an unidentified customer.

The radars to be provided are the ELM-2288 AD-STAR air defense and traffic control radar and the ELM-2106NG 3D tactical air defense radar, which are manufactured by IAI subsidiary ELTA Systems Ltd.

IAI said the radars were configured to the specific requirements of the customer and for the terrain in which they will operate.

"IAI's extensive product line of surveillance radars enables us to integrate optimal customer-specific solutions for defense and civil applications", said an IAI ELTA marketing executive. "We are pleased to report that we are constantly gaining new customers worldwide for our high performance AD-STAR and ELM-2106NG radars."

The AD-STAR ELM-2288MR is a 3D solid-state, long-range S-Band transportable radar for air defense, early warning and traffic control at ranges of more than 186 miles.

The EL/M 2106 NG is a fourth generation 3D system with a range of about 50 miles and can detect low flying aircraft.

IAI gave no details as to a delivery schedule for the systems or their monetary value.

15/02/2014 Marine nationale

Actuellement dans la dernière phase de l’opération « Bois Belleau », le groupe aéronaval constitué autour du porte-avions « Charles de Gaulle » vient d’intégrer la frégate de défense aérienne de la Royal Navy le HMS « Daring ». Elle s’inscrit dans la montée en puissance incrémentale du Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF).

Quelques jours après le sommet franco-britannique entre le ministre de la Défense Jean Yves Le Drian et son homologue Philip Hammond, ayant notamment permis la conclusion de différents accords bilatéraux, la collaboration en matière de défense entre la France et le Royaume-Uni a encore une fois été mise en lumière de façon concrète. Cette intégration s’inscrit dans la perspective de la montée en puissance incrémentale du « Combined Joint Expeditionnary Force » (CJEF), dans sa composante maritime. Du 8 au 15 février, la frégate de défense aérienne type T45 de la Royal Navy « Daring »,de retour d’une mission de longue durée, a été intégrée au sein du groupe aéronaval placé sous le commandement du contre-amiral Eric Chaperon. De la Mer Rouge à la Méditerranée, en passant par le Canal de Suez, le rôle de cette frégate a été d’assurer aux côtés de la FDA «       Forbin », la protection rapprochée du porte-avions « Charles de Gaulle ».

Au titre de cette mission primordiale, les marins britanniques ont multiplié les manœuvres aux côtés de leurs homologues français afin de renforcer leurs aptitudes à opérer au cœur d’un groupe aéronaval. Ainsi, plusieurs ADEX*, entraînements aussi utiles pour les pilotes de Super Etendard Modernisé et de Rafale Marine, que pour les marins chargés de la protection anti-aérienne des unités du GAN, ont été réalisés.

Le 15 février au matin, le HMS « Daring » a reçu « liberté de manœuvre » pour terminer son déploiement indépendant. Cette intégration au cœur de la « French Navy Gobal Strike Force »  conforte l’utilité d’une coopération pragamatique et incrémentale entre ces deux marines, les deux premières en Europe. Le Combined Joint Expeditionnary Force (CJEF) maritime en sera le couronnement.

* Air Defense Exercise

Dec. 1, 2013 - By WENDELL MINNICK, JUNG SUNG-KI and PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU – Defense News

TAIPEI, SEOUL AND TOKYO — China’s establishment of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) last week over the East China Sea has given the US an unexpected challenge as Vice President Joseph Biden prepares for a trip to China, Japan and South Korea beginning this week.

The trip was scheduled to address economic issues, but the Nov. 23 ADIZ announcement raised a troubling new issue for the US and allies in the region. China’s ADIZ overlaps the zones of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Sources indicate China’s ADIZ could be part of its larger anti-access/area-denial strategy designed to force the US military to operate farther from China’s shorelines.

China might also be planning additional identification zones in the South China Sea and near contested areas along India’s border, US and local sources say.

China’s ADIZ might be an attempt by Beijing to improve its claim to disputed islands in the East China Sea also claimed by Japan, sources said. These islands — known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China — are under the administrative control of Japan.

Mike Green, senior vice president for Asia and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said this is part of a larger Chinese strategy beyond disputes over islands.

“This should be viewed as a part of a Chinese effort to assert greater denial capacity and eventual pre-eminence over the First Island Chain” off the coast, he said.

Green, who served on the US National Security Council from 2001 to 2005, said China’s Central Military Commission in 2008 “promulgated the ‘Near Sea Doctrine,’ and is following it to the letter, testing the US, Japan, Philippines and others to see how far they can push.”

June Teufel Dreyer, a veteran China watcher at the University of Miami, Fla., said “salami slicing” is a large part of China’s strategic policy. “The salami tactic has been stunningly successful, so incremental that it’s hard to decide what Japan, or any other country, should respond forcefully to. No clear ‘red line’ seems to have been established,” Dreyer said.

The Chinese refer to it as “ling chi” or “death from a thousand cuts.”

For example, China’s new ADIZ overlaps not only Japan’s zone to encompass disputed islands, but South Korea’s zone by 20 kilometers in width and 115 kilometers in length to cover the Socotra Rock (Ieodo or Parangdo). Socotra is under South Korean control but claimed by China as the Suyan Rock.

Seoul decided to expand its ADIZ after China refused to redraw its declared zone covering the islands. Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) and related government agencies are consulting on how to expand the South Korean ADIZ, drawn in 1951 by the US military, officials said.

“We’re considering ways of expanding [South] Korea’s air defense identification zone to include Ieodo,” said Wi Yong-seop, vice spokesman for the MND.

During annual high-level defense talks between Seoul and Beijing on Nov. 28, South Korean Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo demanded that Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Chinese Army, modify China’s ADIZ.

“We expressed regret over China’s air defense identification zone that overlaps our zone and even includes Ieodo,” Wi said after the bilateral meeting. “We made it clear that we can’t recognize China’s move and jurisdiction over Ieodo waters.”

Amid these growing tensions, South Korea’s arms procurement agency announced Nov. 27 it would push forward on procurement of four aerial refueling planes. Currently, South Korea’s F-15 fighter jets are limited to flying missions over Ieodo for 20 minutes. New tankers will extend that time to 80 minutes.

“With midair refueling, the operational range and flight hours of our fighter jets will be extended to a greater extent, and we will be able to respond to potential territorial disputes with neighboring countries,” a spokesman for South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration said.

In the southern part of China’s ADIZ, which overlaps Taiwan’s ADIZ, Beijing was careful not to cover Taiwan’s Pengjia Island, which is manned by a Taiwan Coast Guard unit.

“The exclusion of the Pengjia Islet indicates that mainland China respects our stance,” said Chinese Nationalist Party legislator Ting Shou-chung. Relations across the Taiwan Strait have been improving over the past several years.

“We’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Peter Dutton, an ADIZ expert and director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College.

“We’re looking to see how China will now behave,” he said. “Hopefully, they will not try to fly inside the airspace over the Senkaku Islands, since that is under Japanese sovereign administration and would therefore be a highly provocative act.”

Dutton downplayed fears of another civilian airliner being shot down, as was the case in 1983, when a Soviet Su-15 fighter shot down a South Korean airliner that strayed into Soviet airspace, killing 269.

In 1988, a US Navy Ticonderoga-class cruiser, the USS Vincennes, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Arabian Gulf, killing 290. The Vincennes mistook the airliner for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter jet.

“For civilian aircraft, this is really not a major issue,” he said. “Those aircraft almost always file flight plans in advance and follow the directions of ground controllers. This means that their route through the ADIZ would already by pre-approved, and this is not a problem for the Chinese.”

Dutton said the real concern is the freedom of military flights.

“But both the US and Japan have said they do not intend to alter their behavior or to abide by the ADIZ procedures, no matter what they are, for military flights,” he said.

In 2001, a Chinese J-8 fighter collided with a US Navy EP-3 Aries signals intelligence aircraft near Hainan Island. Bonnie Glaser, a China specialist at CSIS, said she does not expect China to “back down” from its ADIZ policy, and anticipates more intercepts by Chinese fighters of US reconnaissance aircraft.

“The risk of accident will undoubtedly increase, especially [with] fighters [flown at] Mach 1 by young, inexperienced pilots,” she said.

Alessio Patalano, a lecturer in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London, said the Chinese move might have been prompted by the current tensions in the East China Sea, and recent discussions in Japan about how the military can deal with Chinese drones and manned patrol aircraft that intrude into Japan’s air defense space.

“Chinese authorities are seeking to force Japan to accept the existence of the dispute challenging Japanese control of the islands,” Patalano said. “The problem with this is that Chinese authorities are using military and paramilitary tools to force a change of status quo to what is a political issue.

“Of course, a more robust response could see the US and Japan deploy air assets in the overlapping areas of the ADIZ to challenge the Chinese position,” Patalano said. “US and Japanese aircraft flying together in the Chinese ADIZ would present a serious dilemma to Chinese authority.”

Green said the US should at least send a “joint US-Japan patrol into the area to prove the point that coercion does not work.”

The announcement of the ADIZ also affects the Chinese military, likely adding to the Air Force’s status over the traditional role the Army has played as national defender

November 27th, 2013 By Northrop Grumman - defencetalk.com

Northrop Grumman Corporation has been selected by the Royal Thai Air Force to supply additional AN/TPS-78 air defense and surveillance radar systems.

Under the terms of the contract, Northrop Grumman will begin supplying equipment to the Royal Thai Air Force in 2015. The company will also provide training, spares and logistics support.

“With this award, we continue our 25 years of support of the Royal Thai Air Force and the national security infrastructure of Thailand,” said Robert Royer, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s International Systems business unit. “Highly mobile and proven in a wide range of environmental conditions, the AN/TPS-78 will give the Royal Thai Air Force a powerful new capability for monitoring its national airspace.”

The Northrop Grumman AN/TPS-78 is among the latest generation of highly mobile, state-of-the-art radars made possible by advances in high power transistor technology and designed to operate in some of the harshest, most demanding environments. The radar has proven particularly adept at detecting small targets in areas of difficult land and sea clutter, making it well suited for use in mountainous and coastal regions.

The S-Band, long-range AN/TPS-78 is in use with the U.S. Air Force and a variety of customers worldwide. To date, AN/TPS-78 systems have logged more than 1 million operating hours.

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in unmanned systems, cyber, C4ISR, and logistics and modernization to government and commercial customers worldwide.

November 17, 2013 defense-update.com

MBDA has completed the integration and factory acceptance test of the first Multi-Purpose Combat Vehicle (MPCV) vehicles designed to operate the Mistral surface to air missile. Built for export, these vehicles represent the first production batch. In the next few days, they will be shipped for delivery to the customer country before the end of the year, as announced at the contract signing in February 2011. The customer is believed to be the Saudi-Arabian National Guard (SANG), which ordered 68 MPCV air defense vehicles from French company Lohr in 2011.

The MPCV, developed by MBDA in cooperation with Rheinmetall Defence Electronics (RDE) of Germany, has been designed to meet emerging requirements for a highly mobile weapon system which can be adapted for different missions, either air defence or land combat, depending on the type of missiles it operates. The first development, which is now being delivered, is aimed at air defence and comprises a motorized and stabilized turret that includes electro-optical sensors, a small caliber gun and four, ready-to-fire Mistral missiles with four more missiles stored in the vehicle for re-loading. Additional versions dedicated to land combat are planned for development. The MPCV (Multi-Purpose Combat Vehicle) is based on the German-produced Mercedes Unimog 5000 chassis, a high-mobility 4×4 armored vehicle offered by SOFRAME (of the French Lohr group). The deal also includes 264 Aravis armored vehicles, produced by Nexter and 15 ambulances, all to be provided by Lohr.

This automatic system in its air defence configuration was validated by several Mistral missile firings, including the engagement in only a few seconds, of two targets approaching simultaneously from two different directions. The success of this test demonstrated MPCV’s ability to counter a saturating attack. With this first version in full production, MBDA is now ready to move ahead with a land combat version of the MPCV. This will deploy the totally new MMP surface attack missile which is currently being developed by MBDA.

According to Antoine Bouvier, CEO of MBDA the development of the MPCV took four years and was fully funded by the company. “It then took less than three years after the signing of the first contract to integrate the systems on a vehicle chosen by the end customer, deliver at the agreed date and implement a technology transfer under which the customer will be able, in complete autonomy, to keep its equipment in operational condition.” Parallel to the delivery of factory-finished systems MBDA is completing the installation of a final assembly line in the customer country where the remaining vehicles will undergo final integration, using MBDA provided MPCV kits.

Mistral is a short-range (6 km class) surface-to-air missile capable of intercepting a wide variety of aerial targets including those with even a low infrared signature. It is characterised by an outstanding success rate (96% from more than 4,500 live firings), a high effectiveness against manoeuvring targets, and has demonstrated its capabilities against fixed-wing aircraft, nap-of- the-earth helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise missiles as well as moving land vehicles and Fast Inshore Attack Craft at sea. Mistral, in its land, naval and airborne applications, has been selected by 40 armed forces of 28 countries. More than 17,000 missiles have been produced. Saudi-Arabia is believed to have acquired 600 missiles prior to the MPCV acquisition.

05/11/2013 lexpress.fr  (Cercle Finance)

ThalesRaytheonSystems annonce l'entrée en service, sur le site d'Auenhausen en Westphalie, de son radar de défense aérienne longue portée Ground Master 400 (GM 400) auprès de l'armée de l'air allemande.

Ce radar est le premier des six systèmes commandés par la Bundeswehr pour améliorer la surveillance aérienne dans tout le centre de l'Allemagne, de la mer du Nord jusqu'aux Alpes. L'ensemble des six radars devraient être opérationnels d'ici 2015.

Le GM 400 remplacera les anciens radars de moyenne puissance qui avaient été fournis par Thomson-CSF à la fin des années 70. Montés sur une tour fixe, ces radars peuvent être commandés depuis le site radar lui-même ou depuis un centre à distance.

September 23rd, 2013 Rosoboronexport

India is going to buy more than fifty short range air defense systems

India has announce a tender to buy more than fifty short range air defense systems. Rosoboronexport probably will submit two Russian systems – Tor-M2E manufactured by PVO Almaz-Antei and the surface-to-air missile system Pantsir-S1.

India already has air defense systems that was supplied by the Soviet Union and later on by Russia. Indian army employs the earlier counterpart of Pantsir which is called Tunguska. The army also has medium range air defense systems S-75 and short range air defense systems S-125, Kvadrat air defense systems which serves as a basis for India’s own improved surface-to-air missile system called Akash.

“India knows how to use Soviet and Russian air defense systems and they will quickly get the hang of the new systems. Of course there was a period when Israeli manufacturers cooperated with Indian military forces and nowadays supply them with short and medium range air defense systems both for Indian navy and land forces. On the other hand Russia offers the cutting edge systems which have already been tested both in Russian army and in other armies as well. Pantsir combines in itself capabilities of a quick-firing long-range missile”, said Said Aminov, editor in chief of Vestnik PVO web-site.

The range of action of Pantsir is 20 km. This characteristic makes Pantsir a one-off system. Nowadays we have made four contracts with Middle East and North African countries to supply this surface-to-air missile system.

“Tor-M2E is also quite effective system. It was exported extensively. Now we offer a container variant. The pilot model with the Indian manufactured undercarriage of this system was presented at MAKS show. Tor can protect against all air weapons including high-precision weapons”, said Said Aminov.

According to Vyacheslav Davydenko, Rosoboronexport’s spokesman not only India but also other countries choose Russian air defense systems. Such systems as Tor-M2E and Pantsir are new and in the immediate future there will be no question as to their improvement or replacement.

Experts say that if there are orders for the supply of more than 52 systems, then it will be possible to consider the licensed production of certain kinds of Russian weapons in India. As a matter of fact the experience of supplying T-90 tanks and multipurpose Su-30 MKI jets show that this can be possible.