Farnborough 2012 : Selex Looks to Asia for Defence Suite Export

Following the operational success of Selex Galileo’s Praetorian defensive aids suite aboard the Eurofighter Typhoon in Libya, the company is looking to take this and other systems to export. Praetorian is now ‘operationally proven’ as a result of the operation, and the company is looking at countries such as India, Kuwait and the UAE as potential target markets for its aircraft-based systems.


‘Many Selex systems are based around the Praetorian system,’ Pete Forrest, VP marketing and sales for EW at Selex said at a pre-Farnborough media briefing on 17 May. ‘We are now looking at taking it international. We are looking at taking sovereign capability to export.’

He said the company was able to transfer the knowledge and technology mainly from its Helicopter Integrated Defensive Aids System (HIDAS) and Praetorian suites. ‘More and more, particularly in the export arena, customers want to see what is inside the black box and use it elsewhere,’ Forrestt said. ‘If we have the right government to government relationships we can use that technology. We need to improve the knowledge of the indigenous operators.


‘We are now looking at new upgrades [for the Praetorian] to keep it ahead in the marketplace,’ he continued, although he also added: ‘We’re moving away from Praetorian to the rest of the portfolio, promoting sovereign EW data collection.’

Meanwhile, with regards to the company’s radar capabilities, Bob Mason, senior VP of marketing and sales, radar and advanced targeting, claimed that Selex is ‘the only company’ to still take AESA capabilities into the surveillance market. ‘We’re showing that E-scan is important in a surveillance mode,’ he explained. ‘The traditional target set for surveillance is definitely changing. One of the differentiators with this is the identification of small targets, which is what we are working on.


‘Afghanistan and Iraq have probably built false beliefs in people about the capability of EO/IR. The time for this radar is definitely coming.’ With regards to the Raven ESOS for the Gripen aircraft, Mason said: ‘We’re about to deliver the first radar to Saab in the next few weeks, and all being well it should be shown at Farnborough [air show].’ Final testing will then start after Farnborough, Mason said.

‘We are also cracking on with Captor E as an industry,’ he continued. ‘It will fly next year on a Typhoon aircraft. We’re still in discussions with nations; those with money will buy soon.’ He said that for the Typhoon the company has repositioned the +/- 60 degree field of regard in the Raven array, and it is now +/- 90 degrees – so it is a repositioned, rather than a fixed array.


‘This gain in performance is well worth any degradation,’ Mason explained. ‘The Typhoon can see much further because of the repositioner and the aperture.’  Selex is also working on an exportable DIRCM baseline system with Northrop Grumman, and Mason said: ‘The US is very wary as to whom to export the DIRCM system to, but there are coalition nations that will need this system.


‘We could take an order now for delivery in 18 months’ time; there is interest in a number of markets in the Middle East and Europe, looking at a number of configurations. ‘Qualification is expected early next year, so we’re well on our way with that,’ he said. Selex is currently starting to build the models that will go into qualification.

‘The first customer might be an export one, but the UK will benefit from it,’ Mason explained. ‘We’ve seen this investment burden for the past 6-7 years.’


He also confirmed that the company has been in discussions with regards to providing systems for the Anglo-French MALE UAV programme, and is working with Thales on the effort: ‘We are certainly engaged with the primes involved. We have the roadmap for having our radars in the timescale.’