Leonardo, Thales Demo Anti-MANPAD Warning and Protection System

Leonardo and Thales today demonstrated their missile warning and protection system as part of the SALT (Surface-to-Air Launch Trial) hosted by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) in Sweden in which both companies invested in the integration of the system.

The latest-generation protective system consisted of a Leonardo Miysis Directed Infra-Red Counter-Measure (DIRCM) system and Thales Elix-IR multi-function Threat Warning System (TWS), integrated through Leonardo’s Defensive Aids Suite (DAS) Controller, an advanced electronic warfare computer. Together, the system offers protection from heat-seeking man-portable air-defence missiles (known as MANPADS) which are being widely employed by armed forces and terrorist groups.

During the live-fire exercises, when an Infra-Red (IR) missile was fired at a ground target protected by the Leonardo-Thales system, the Elix-IR system detected, tracked, classified and declared the missile as a threat and rapidly passed an alert over to the Miysis system.

Miysis then tracked the incoming threat and accurately directed a jamming laser onto the missile’s seeker. Miysis used a DSTL developed jamming waveform to confuse the missile’s guidance system, steering the missile away from the target. As well as proving the system’s basic capability, the Leonardo and Thales team demonstrated how they have optimised the threat-warning/threat-defeat chain to thwart incoming missiles as quickly as possible.

The integrated protection system is able to protect both military and civil platforms, ranging from small helicopters to large tactical transports/VIP platforms. This successful trial against live MANPADS missiles follows earlier individually-effective demos of both Miysis and Elix-IR. At a previous SALT event the Miysis DIRCM successfully acquired and accurately tracked 100% of all live Man-Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) missiles fired.