Ramona Adams
Leonardo has secured an $11.6 million contract from a NATO agency to supply friend-or-foe identification systems for the Italian navy’s NH90 frigate helicopters.
The company said Tuesday it will equip the NH90 fleet with the Mode 5 SIT434/5 IFF platform to help Italy’s naval personnel distinguish between potential threats and friendly forces.
NATO member countries are required to install Mode 5 equipment by 2020 since the Mode 4 signal is scheduled to be turned off that year.
Leonardo also completed the integration and qualification tests of SIT434/5 interrogators on NH90 aircraft.
The company also secured a multimillion dollar contract from Safran‘s electronics and defense business to deliver PicoSAR active electronically scanned array radars for integration onto the French army’s unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a separate release.
Leonardo will carry out initial deliveries of radars and spares in 2017 to support the long-range, over-land surveillance missions of France’s Patroller UAVs.
PicoSAR is designed to detect moving land-based targets and gather imagery of the ground through the sensor’s synthetic aperture radar mode.
The radar has been used in various missions across Oceania, the Far East, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, North America and South America, Leonardo noted.
