IAI teams with Thales on missiles for British frigates

Live firing from a ship Credit: IAI
Live firing from a ship Credit: IAI

The Sea Serpent delivers an agile, highly penetrative, combined anti-ship and land attack capability at ranges of more than 200 kilometers.

Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1) and Thales in the UK have partnered in order to equip the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates with an anti-ship and anti-surface Sea Serpent missiles that can meet the rapidly expanding range and intensity of current and emerging threats.

The Sea Serpent delivers an agile, highly penetrative, combined anti-ship and land attack capability at ranges significantly in excess of 200 kilometers. The missiles deploy an innovative RF seeker head and a sophisticated data analysis and weapon control system to provide precise target detection, discrimination and classification. The Sea Serpent overcomes both kinetic counter-fire and electronic countermeasures of increasing sophistication, so that the missile can locate and attack its target in littoral, open-ocean and overland environments. It is especially designed to prevail in contested, congested and confusing situations characterized by large numbers of decoys, disrupted reality and heavy electronic interference, as well as clutter from land and false returns.

In fast-moving situations, Sea Serpent incorporates mid-course updates from real-time ISTAR feeds and the ability to re-task in flight, especially in cooperative engagements and distributed sensor-and-shooter networks.

As the most advanced ship-launched anti-surface missile in the free world, Sea Serpent also offers significant Military Off-the-Shelf Solution (MOTS) advantages in terms of cost, time-to-procurement, entry into operational service and risk reduction. Benchmarked against the need to defeat the most sophisticated platforms and technologies, Sea Serpent has been developed in parallel with similar missile systems in service with the Israeli Navy and was selected to provide powerful strike capabilities for Finland’s SSM2020 program. These systems are based on the heritage of the GABRIEL family of surface-to-surface missiles. Sea Serpent has already demonstrated an impressive Next Day capacity to deal with emerging threats, as well as the technological flexibility for further growth and development.

IAI says it looks forward to partnering with Thales in the UK’s proven track record of delivering complex sensor and weapon solutions for the Royal Navy and other navies.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 13, 2021

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2021

Live firing from a ship Credit: IAI
Live firing from a ship Credit: IAI
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