Thales and Leonardo have announced that their missile warning and protection system has completed live-fire scenarios, demonstrating the system’s ability to defend against incoming missiles.
Thales say that the integrated system was demonstrated as part of the SALT (Surface-to-Air Launch Trial) hosted by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) in Sweden. The UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) sponsored Leonardo and Thales to take part in the trial, while both companies invested in the integration of the system.
The protective system consisted of a Leonardo Miysis Directed Infra-Red Counter-Measure (DIRCM) system and Thales Elix-IR multi-function Threat Warning System (TWS), integrated through Leonardo’s Defensive Aids Suite (DAS) Controller, an advanced electronic warfare computer.
According to a statement:
“During the live-fire exercises, when an Infra-Red (IR) missile was fired at a ground target protected by the Leonardo-Thales system, the Elix-IR system detected, tracked, classified and declared the missile as a threat and rapidly passed an alert over to the Miysis system. Miysis then tracked the incoming threat and accurately directed a jamming laser onto the missile’s seeker. Miysis used a DSTL developed jamming waveform to confuse the missile’s guidance system, steering the missile away from the target.
As well as proving the system’s basic capability, the Leonardo and Thales team demonstrated how they have optimised the threat-warning/threat-defeat chain to thwart incoming missiles as quickly as possible.”
The integrated protection system is able to protect both military and civil platforms, ranging from small helicopters to large tactical transports/VIP platforms. While Thales and Leonardo will continue to market their systems individually, they will also work closely together to offer the integrated protection capability.
Ooooh, that is clever.
Could that be used to perhaps confuse a ballistic missile’s detonation altitude, i.e. many 100s kM above the actual target?
Would the intercepting EMW wave be able to penetrate the leading plasma cloud of a hypersonic missile? If so, we suddenly have a very neat way of defeating imminent, hypersonic weapons – for the time being.