Selex Galileo Strengthens its Position in Global Markets by its Radar and EW Solutions

Selex Galileo organized a press meeting in Edinburgh where Defence Turkey participated in. Steve J Roberts VP Group Strategy, Peter Forrest Vice President Marketing and Sales, Electronic Warfare, Bob Mason, Senior Vice President Marketing and Sales, Radar and Advanced Targeting and Alastair Morrison, Senior Vice President, Radar and Advanced Targeting informed the press members about its latest EW and Radar technologies.

Selex Galileo offers customers and end users the ability to take national ownership of their EW programming through the establishment of an indigenous Sovereign EWOS capability. EWOS concerns the resources, tools and skill sets required in order to achieve a full capability from EW hardware: DETECT, PROTECT, COLLECT, DISSECT. Selex Galileo provides interim or long term classified operational support EW data files for Royal Saudi Air Force Typhoons, Kuwait Air Force AH 64 Apaches EW and EWOS training for Hellenic Army AH 64 Apache, Training of UK MOD Defence EW Centre (DEWC) personel and Support to DEWC for its software toolsets in UK service.

Selex Galileo remains at the forefront of Electronic Warfare capability development, spending over £12M per year in Internal Research and Development. A significant proportion of this year on year investment has been spent on the development and sustainment of DAS Controllers and EW Operational Support (EWOS) solutions and RF Electronic Support/Counter Measures.

Selex Galileo has supplied over 500 stand alone DAS Controllers to domestic and international customers. Its new range of modular RF receivers will help customers to accurately identify complex weapon systems at a time when they are being used by state sponsored adversaries. Praetorian orders and after sales support continues to contribute the largest proportion of its revenues. The business winning emphasis has now been placed on its remaining portfolio, with opportunities in its home markets of the UK, USA and KSA pursued alongside a number of strategic campaigns in GCC countries and India. Selex Galieo has a strong presence in Saudi Arabia , UAE and Kuwait with its EW products and capabilities.

Selex Galileo contributes to its customers’ most challenging needs for situational awareness, protection and sensors systems solutions. Albion latest generation detector technology for thermal imagers and E-Scan radar are core market-leading technologies that the Company exploits in a range of products.

Thanks to expertise in radar technology , Selex Galileo has opened the way to develop PicoSTAR, a fully integrated Radar and Electro-Optic payload suitable for a wide range of small fixed and rotary wing platforms such as Tactical UAVs. Tactical platforms such as UAVs are currently limited to using Electro-Optical sensors due to their restricted payload capacity. PicoSTAR provides smaller tactical platforms with the capability to gather near-simultaneous radar and Electro-optical surveillance data. In addition, the radar capability provides these platforms with an all-weather capability through the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery and Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI). This capability can significantly enhance the Commander’s overall situational awareness and threat assessment capability.PicoSTAR is also designed to utilise Burst Illumination LADAR (BIL) advanced EO imaging technology to provide a significant increase in EO detection and identification range when compared to current passive thermal imaging systems. PicoSTAR is in development and will be flight tested in 2013. The PicoSAR radar has been demonstrated on a number of fixed and rotary wing platforms, manned and unmanned, in Europe, the US and the Middle East and is now being operated by 4 customers.

Since the mid ‘90s, the GRIFO Radar family has accumulated more than 100,000 operational flight hours with over 450 units sold. The GRIFO Radar family is a fourth-generation X-band coherent pulse-Doppler multimode-multirole fire-control radar, providing heightened performance to new and upgraded aircraft.

GRIFO has a strong and well recognized position in the market, particularly in the area of fighter aircraft retrofits and light combat aircraft. The radar architecture is based on an air-cooled transmitter with fully-coherent highefficiency TWT, a multiple-channel receiver, a processor based on high-rate DSP’s, wideband waveform generator, four waveforms (Low, Medium, Medium look-up and High Pulse Repetition Frequency), all including range and velocity de-stagger for optimal long range target detection in any clutter condition.

From an operational point of view, GRIFO offers a comprehensive suite of operational, field proven modes supporting Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface missions

Recently , General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), along with Selex Galileo (a Finmeccanica company) and Cobham Aviation Services (Cobham), demonstrated a new open payload architecture during the Sovereign Payload Capability Demonstration (SPCD) held at GA-ASI’s Gray Butte Flight Operations Facilities in Palmdale, Calif.The event included a live flight demonstration over the Pacific Ocean of a GA-ASI Predator® B/MQ-9 Reaper UAS fitted with a Selex Galileo Seaspray 7500E surveillance radar and showcased the radar’s ability to track targets on land, in the littoral and maritime environments, and from air-to-air. The demonstration was the first step in proving the concept of our platform and sensor-agnostic sky ISTAR mission management system which will be flexible enough to meet the needs of any UAS programme going forward. To meet the demanding sensor requirements of these future UAS, Seaspray radar exemplifies the foundation of advanced AESA technology that will allow to provide high-resolution, multimode, multi-domain, and very wide-area coverage surveillance to users.

Selex Galieo’s presence and activities in Turkey

This focus on Turkey dates back to the 1970s when Selex Galileo partnered with the Turkish Navy on the OGR7 programme for which the company still provides logistics and support.

Selex Galileo’s long experience in Turkey has included successfully delivering a number of programmes in the country ranging from supplying radars for the Türk Deniz Kuvvetleri (Turkish Navy) and Coast Guard all the way to providing solar arrays for Turkey’s domestic RASAT satellite.

The Turkish Navy’s AB212 helicopters are equipped with radars from Selex Galileo’s Seaspray family. An Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) version of the Seaspray has been selected by demanding international customers such as the United States Coast Guard.

Currently, Under the LST contract, Selex Galileo signed an MoU with Anadolu Shipyard on the sourcing of the IRST (Infrared Search & Track) System.The Silent Acquisition Surveillance System (SASS), based on Infrared Search and Track (IRST) technology is suitable for application on board Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) . A further agreement is expected to be signed in the following weeks.

Building further on Selex Galileo’s history of providing cutting edge radar systems for Turkish forces, Selex Galileo is also looking to offer its Grifo radar to the Turkish Air Force (TuAF). More than 450 variants of the Grifo radar have been sold to Singapore, Brazil, the Czech Republic and other significant international customers. Already in service on aircraft such as the F-5 and Mirage, it is ideally suited to the Turkish Air Forces’ F-16 Block 30 fighters. This opportunity would also allow Selex Galileo to partner with in-country industry and build its presence in Turkey. Currently the Grifo radar is being offered with Northrop Grumman Corporation, within a complete avionics upgrades package, for US and international F-5 opportunities.

Another Selex Galileo radar, the PicoSAR, is also being promoted to Turkey for its up-coming Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) requirements and was on show at the most recent IDEF exhibition. PicoSAR is a compact and lightweight surveillance radar suitable for tactical UAS as well as fixed and rotary wing manned platforms.

With specific regard to UAS, Selex Galileo is in the unique position of being able to offer a wholly owned, fully European, ITAR-free solution for Tactical and Medium Altitude unmanned system requirements in the form of the Falco UAS. This is particularly attractive when addressing the Industrial Returns and Offset expectations of international customers such as Turkey. The Falco is a superior tactical and medium altitude solution which has been sourced by two international customers, and Selex Galileo has recently begun to promote the new Falco EVO with expanded payload capacity and endurance.

Selex Galileo is also experienced in avionics, and is one of the key suppliers of such systems for Turkey’s AW129 helicopters. The company is also a key player in the Eurofighter Typhoon programme, leading several international consortia to deliver some of the Typhoon’s most critical systems. Selex Galileo’s activities bring Finmeccanica’s share in the programme up to 60%.

Selex Galileo has also worked over the course of several years to perfect the ATOS system, an effective and user friendly mission system that’s able to provide critical surveillance information to crews. It’s one of the best systems in its class, and the company has sold more than 40 over the last 10 years to 9 different customers.

Introduced to the Turkish market at the 2011 IDEF exhibition, Selex Galileo’s Road Marshall system represents a valuable solution to a number of requirements for increased situational awareness in the land domain. Road Marshall is an all-weather observation system designed to boost the capabilities of armored vehicles. It’s just one part of Selex Galileo’s wide range of high-performance electro-optic (EO) systems such as the Janus detection/aiming sight, all of which can be offered to Turkey to boost the capabilities of the country’s forces as well in partnership with Turkish companies to assist in developing Turkey’s approach to export markets such as Oman and the Far East.