Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has signed a huge deal, worth $777 million, with Indian state-owned company BEL. IAI will supply LRSAM Air and Missile Defense (AMD) systems, the marine version of the AMD system Barak 8, for seven ships of the Indian Navy.
This brings sales of Barak 8 in the past few years to over $6 billion.
The LRSAM system is an operational AMD system used by Israel's navy as well as by India's navy, air and land forces. It provides broad aerial and point defense against a wide range of threats to the marine arena from the air, sea or land. The system integrates several advanced state-of-the-art systems, such as digital radar, command and control, launchers, interceptors with modern RF seekers, data link and system-wide connectivity.
India maintains close relations with Israel's defense establishment, and has entered into several substantial deals with Israeli defense companies.
The Barak 8 system was developed as ajoint veture between IAI and the Indian weapons development authority DRDO. Other partners in the project were Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., IAI subsidiary Elta, and Indian companies BEL, BDL, and L&T.
IAI CEO and president Nimrod Sheffer said, "This deal reflects the direction in which IAI is heading: business focus, profitability and growth. IAI’s partnership with India dates many years back and has culminated in joint system development and production. India is a major market for IAI and we plan to protest and reinforce our positioning in India, also in view of increasing competition. For its part, IAI management continually refreshes its business strategy while preserving the core capability and growth engines, of which the Barak 8 is an example".
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 24, 2018
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