The sea has always been a strategic playground for the nation all over the world. In the past, projecting naval forces to the high seas was sufficient to demonstrate a nation’s military might.
Today, national interests also focus on littoral areas and inner seas – as vessels operate closer to the mainland, the battlespace becomes congested, complicated and even more challenging. The situation may become exacerbated in arenas where the enemy maintains anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities, in the form of long-range air defenses, coastal anti-ship missiles, and sea mines. Such threats are limiting freedom of navigation and operation of naval forces and risking merchant shipping, threatening the sea lanes.
Today’s navies face rapidly evolving threats, powered by significant technical advances in targeting and attack systems. Advanced threats include aircraft and combat vessels with low radar cross sections – both manned and unmanned; sophisticated, long-range anti-ship cruise missiles; and targeting sensors including airborne and satellite imaging radars. These threats boost the enemy’s ability to attack the vessel from beyond its line of sight, and threaten to saturate legacy defensive systems with multiple simultaneous attacks.
In order to provide naval forces with effective countermeasures against these developments, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has leveraged its rich technological heritage and culture of innovation to introduce state-of-the-art, integrated naval systems, including the BARAK MX air and missile defense system with LRAD and ER interceptors, loitering munitions, VTOLs, and others.
Based on a decades-long experience, delivering naval combat-proven offensive and defensive weapons, sensors, combat management, and information systems, IAI has cooperated with the world’s navies, fielding the latest defense solutions keeping naval fleets and maritime security forces ready for new challenges.
Maintaining Maritime Domain Awareness
IAI offers navies a comprehensive sensors suite to secure their coastal waters, littorals, and Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ). Such systems suites range from SAR & Optic satellites to aerial maritime patrols by aircraft and UAVs, to coastal radars, including Over-the-horizon (OTH), Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), and electro-optical observations. Through the integration of this wide variety of capabilities, customers establish Total Maritime Situation Awareness (MSA).
These systems rely on multiple sources of information, from commercial, open-sources such as AIS and vessel traffic monitoring, wide-area scanning using space-based synthetic aperture radars (SAR), over the horizon, and surface radar scans, electronic surveillance, communications interception, and tracks by imaging sensors. By employing sensor fusion, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and decision support algorithms, IAI’s MSA information systems streamline the operator’s workflow, thus buying more time for decision making and cost effective resource allocation.
Integrated Combat Suite
Naval vessels follow a similar path by integrating the sensors and weapons onboard with IAI’s Naval Combat Suite. IAI’s open architecture CMS integrates these capabilities across weapons, platforms, and entire task forces, enabling net-centric operations.
IAI’s BARAK MX naval air and missile defense system reflects this capability. Employing Area Defense to intercept aircraft, missiles, or drones at a range up to 70 km (LRAD) or 150 km (ER), the Barak MX family of weapons extends the defensive coverage across the entire task force by combining multiple vessels carrying the BARAK systems into an integrated defense network. Users can also network their offensive weapons across a task force to achieve scalable and optimized effects. These capabilities could include a range of IAI-made weapons, including long-range missiles, loitering weapons, or precision-guided missiles with wide variety of homing capabilities.
Leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovation, and backed by decades of experience developing and fielding integrated naval suites, sensors, and combat systems, IAI’s innovative naval systems enable navies to find and decisively defeat threats under the most challenging conditions and provide Maritime Superiority to their nations.
