LONDON — The Royal Air Force could be the first customer for a new
radar-jamming anti-missile countermeasure following tests of the decoy
on a Tornado strike jet.
The British arm of Finmeccanica said
negotiations were underway with the British Ministry of Defence to
supply their BriteCloud decoy following successful trials on a Tornado
GR4 at a range in the United States in October.
“We’re currently
in talks to supply BriteCloud to the UK MoD. No further trials have
taken place as the October tests were deemed successful, although it is
likely that further trials will take place to verify and extend the
operational advantage,” said Jon McCullagh, the electronic warfare
campaign manager at Finmeccanica’s Airborne and Space Systems
Division. “We are hopeful that the UK will be one of the first nations
to carry the new decoys into operations."
A spokesman for Britain’s MoD, however, said no decision on acquiring the capability had yet been taken.
“The
MoD is currently planning a series of trials with the BriteCloud
system, following very encouraging results from test flights in the USA
in 2015. A decision on procurement will be taken in due course,” he
said.
Analysts said the move comes at a time when Russia has been
developing a new generation of radar-guided missiles for domestic and
export use.
BriteCloud is a self-contained unit with a battery-powered digital
radio frequency memory (DRFM) jammer. The company developed the system
alongside the UK government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.
Finmeccanica said
the decoy can be ejected from fighter aircraft in a straight swap for
the existing 55mm flare to counter the threat from the latest
air-to-air and surface-to-air radio frequency guided missiles.
Saab
is already offering the decoy as an enhancement option for its range of
Gripen fighters including the new "E" model due to be rolled out for
the first time in mid-May.
McCullagh said the new decoy is not a
replacement product for existing systems: “It’s a complementary
protective system. It offers a very quick-to-activate decoy capability
in circumstances where other countermeasures may not be suitable or as
effective."
British fast jets already have the capability to
counter radar-guided missiles with towed radar decoys, but Doug Barrie,
the senior air analyst at the London-based think tank International
Institute for Strategic Studies, said it was possible they would use
BriteCloud in conjunction with the older system.
“If you don’t
have a towed radar decoy already deployed, or you don’t have time to
deploy it, you could pop off a BriteCloud. It may also give you greater
freedom to maneuver if your decoy is not connected to the aircraft by a
fiber-optic cable,” he said.
Barrie said radar-guided missiles have been around for a while, but
now a new generation of weapons was being introduced by the Russians.
“The
US and it’s allies had a pretty good idea how to deal with the old
Soviet-era systems used by Iraq and Libya, but the SA-17 Grizzly missile
operated by the Syrians is a much more modern radar-guided missile and
would have constituted a considerable handful had the regime’s use of
chemical weapons triggered airstrikes by the West,” he said.
“Cooling
relations with Moscow has prompted recognition that the radar-guided
threat has not by any means gone away. In terms of what the Russians
have been doing in regards to air-to-air and particularly surface-to-air
missiles they have a new generation of weapons becoming available.
These missiles are also available on the export market and pose more of a
capability threat than we have seen in the last 20 years,” Barrie said.
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europe/2016/03/30/raf-radar-guided-missile-threat/82417308/
