PARIS: Indonesia orders Selex Sage ESM

By: BETH STEVENSONPARIS
Source: Flightglobal.com
16 hours ago

Selex has been awarded a contract to deliver its Sage 600 electronic support measure (ESM) system to Indonesia for integration on board the air force’s maritime patrol variant of its Airbus Defence & Space CN-235 transport.

The electronic warfare system passively collects emitter data from RF sources and compares them with an emitter library to identify threats and geolocate them, and will be incorporated on the CN-235 through integrator Integrated Surveillance and Defence. This marks the first sale of the Sage system for a fixed wing type.

“We’ve been maturing Indonesia as a market for a while now,” Pete Forrest, vice president of marketing and sales for electronic warfare product at Selex says, noting that although the CN-235 is a big aircraft, the requirement was for a compact system.

It has gone to contract in less than 12 months, and will be delivered in September an anticipated in-operation date of the end of 2016.

Selex offers the Electronic Warfare Operational Support mission support and training package for customers of its EW systems, and although Indonesia will receive a baseline version of this, Forrest says that Selex will look to offer the whole package to the air force.

The air force has an inventory of seven CN-235s, Flightglobal’s Ascend Fleets database shows, including one maritime patrol variant.

Meanwhile Sage is about to undergo four weeks of testing on the Schiebel S-100 Camcopter rotary wing unmanned air vehicle, which is being offered for a Royal Australian Navy requirement that is exploring different options of UAV, including both fixed and rotary wing.

There are also planned ESM trials of Sage for the UK Ministry of Defence alongside its Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. It has been provided to the Republic of Korea as part of a package of electronic warfare equipment for the country’s Maritime Operational Helicopter programme for the AgustaWestland AW159 Wildcat, and is being pitched to Brazil for use on board its AgustaWestland Lynx helicopters.

“Sage is not penetrating the market, so people are taking note,” Forrest notes.