Successful live-fire trial for laser self-protection system

The laser is being designed to be fitted to RAF aircraft including the intelligence gathering Shadow R2 and A400M transporter.  

During the trial at the Vidsel Test Range, the system completely defeated a range of infrared heat-seeking missiles being fired simultaneously. 

All the threats were defeated using a laser, which has been designed and developed by the Team Pellonia partnership between Leonardo UK, Thales UK, and the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

In a statement, defence secretary, John Healey said: “Identifying, tracking and defeating threats from the air in seconds is crucial to having the edge over those who try to do us harm.  

“We’re equipping our Armed Forces with the very latest technology to keep them safe and give them the advantage on operations. 

“This high-tech laser is another excellent example of joint working between our Dstl experts and the UK’s defence industry.”

The system uses Thales’s Elix-IR threat warning system that detects and identifies the launch of missiles using a series of algorithms to filter out background clutter so that only valid threats are tracked, classified and declared.  

Once the threat(s) has been classified, an alert is sent to the Leonardo’s Miysis directed infrared countermeasure which tracks the incoming missile and directs a jamming laser onto the missile.

Leonardo’s senior vice-president of radar and advanced targeting, Mark Stead, said: “Miysis DIRCM has again proven itself as a reliable, effective protection system and is flying operationally on many platforms today.”  

“Once again, as previously witnessed during SALT 3 in 2018, Elix-IR has proved its world leading capabilities as the latest generation multi-function infrared threat warning system during what was a comprehensive and complicated multi-faceted trial,” added Stephen McCann, Thales’s managing director of optronics & missile electronics UK.