ARIE EGOZI / TEL AVIV & STEWART PENNEY / LONDON
Updated electro-optical system can provide near real-time imagery to improve sensor-to-shooter time
Northrop Grumman has extended its marketing ties with Israel's Rafael to include the Israeli company's Reccelite reconnaissance pod as well as the Litening targeting system. Reccelite is an electro-optical reconnaissance system developed from Litening. Rafael has updated the system to provide near real-time imagery to improve the sensor-to-shooter timeline.
Rafael says it can offer a 10min sensor-to-shooter capability by using the infrared and visual sensor-equipped Reccelite, Golden Bay image analysis system, Spice precision-guided bomb and Ravnet communications system.
Dr Eitan Yudelevich, Rafael vice-president marketing, says Golden Bay is integrated into a ground station and allows image processing of large areas using data from unmanned air vehicles or Reccelite.
Target data can then be transmitted to an aircraft for the attack. Ravnet provides broadband datalinks between aircraft and weapons, says Yudelevich. Target selection to execution time will be a key discriminator, says Yudelevich, "so we're taking sensor-to-shooter as an integrated business area".
Not all systems in a package will necessarily come from Rafael. "We are teaming to approach the customer in the right way," he says. Yudelevich says the Iraq War emphasised the need for command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
Shlomo Levy, Rafael Litening and Reccelite marketing manager, says the reconnaissance system's gimballed sensor head, retained from the targeting pod, allows one sensor to provide vertical, forward-looking, side-looking and oblique images. It has a spot mode allowing the pilot to select an area of interest.
The Reccelite, which has an internal inertial measurement unit, can provide accurate co-ordinates for points of interest. It comprises the pod, a datalink and the ground station. The datalink is used to transmit the intelligence data to the ground and redirect the pod in the air. Imagery is recorded on a solid state recorder in the pod.
Source: Flight International
