Finmeccanica UK

This range of platforms is capable of undertaking roles such as air superiority, ground attack, tactical transport, and strategic and tactical surveillance. In the UK, the focus is very much on the design, development and integration of the enabling mission electronics, including communications, defensive aids, surveillance technologies and airborne radar.

The group also delivers the necessary training and support services and is a global leader in air traffic management solutions, providing complete, through-life capability.

Leading-edge Technologies

Based around its Centres of Technology Excellence, Finmeccanica companies in the UK possess world-leading technology in radar, electro-optics and night vision, secure communications, electronic warfare and self-protection. These technologies are pivotal to the capability of a modern combat aircraft. Selex ES provides approximately 60% of the defence electronics for the Eurofighter Typhoon, delivering outstanding situational awareness through the Captor fire control radar, the PIRATE infrared search and track system and the Praetorian defensive aids suite, as well as mission-critical avionics and the provision of simulation, training and logistics support.

As well as the technology developed for the Eurofighter Typhoon, the electro-optical targeting system for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is based on technology developed in the UK. The Vixen 500E Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, developed in Edinburgh, has entered operational service with US Customs and Border Protection.

Communications systems are crucially important in providing the connections needed in today’s networked world. We provide satellite communications, secure radios and data links as well as a wide range of navigational aids.

Platforms

Finmeccanica’s systems integration capability in the UK has its roots in our international manufacture of a broad range of fixed-wing aircraft. Our most advanced product is the Eurofighter Typhoon, a supersonic twin-engine aircraft, developed and produced in collaboration across four European nations. Through Alenia Aermacchi, Finmeccanica is one of the prime contractors in the Eurofighter Typhoon consortium.

To prepare the pilots of the future for aircraft such as Typhoon, the company provides a family of training aircraft from turboprop platforms through to advanced/lead-in fighter trainers such as the M-346. As for support aircraft, the C27J Spartan, also designed and produced by Alenia Aermacchi, is the only medium tactical military airlifter designed to full military specifications.

The most complex area for the future concerns the development of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Finmeccanica, through Alenia Aermacchi and Selex ES, has developed a family of UAS ranging from the medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) ‘Sky Y’ platform, to tactical surveillance systems such as the Falco and man-portable microsystems, such as the Crex and Asio.

With the growing requirement for advanced and unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance and intelligence continuing to grow, Selex ES is developing skyISTAR, a mission management system that will provide advanced sensor capabilities and operational sovereignty to the customer. Building on the company’s wealth of experience in all aspects of UAS, skyISTAR will be platform-agnostic and suitable for multi-mission roles. Its flexible and adaptable architecture will accommodate a variety of sensor combinations and it will provide rapid interpretation of the data, delivering valuable and useful information at the right time. In less than two years, a launch customer has been secured for skyISTAR, which will see the system integrated on a MALE UAS.