Leonardo DRS, Inc. has announced it has been down-selected by the US Army, and will begin negotiations, to provide its mission equipment package for the accelerated Initial Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (IM-SHORAD) effort.
Press Release, 28th June 2018: The mission equipment package includes kinetic and non-kinetic defeat capabilities and an on-board radar. The Leonardo DRS system, when integrated on the Stryker A1 platform, will provide Maneuver Brigade Combat Teams with a full ‘detect-identify-track-defeat’ capability required to defeat UAS, rotary-wing and fixed-wing threats. Leonardo DRS expects to receive the prototype contract in August of this year.
The system, developed by Leonardo DRS’s Land Systems business unit, integrates mature technologies from industry teammates and partners, including Moog’s Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform (RIwP), Raytheon’s Stinger missiles and Rada’s Multi-mission Hemispheric Radar. The IM-SHORAD solution provides both hard and soft kill capabilities to the warfighter while minimising impacts on the mobility of the Stryker.
“We are very excited about the opportunity to work with the Army to deliver this critically important capability to our soldiers. We understand the challenges associated with an accelerated acquisition strategy and will leverage our recent successes with counter-UAS to meet the Army’s schedule,” said Aaron Hankins, Vice President and General Manager, DRS Land Systems.
“Our long term investments and continuous work with the user-community to create a multi-mission turret for the soldier has been successful. We are happy to see the Army select RIwP to meet their IM-SHORAD requirements,” said Jim Riedel, Group Vice President, Moog Defense Sector.
The unique RIwP turret supports multiple weapon configurations to give tactical commanders flexibility in various combat scenarios. The Leonardo DRS solution has the mobility, firepower and soldier protection required to fight forward at the lowest tactical levels. When fielded, this IM-SHORAD capability will provide tactical level commands the precision ground-to-ground and ground-to-air lethality necessary to fight and win across a multi-domain battlefield.
This down-select decision is part of the Army’s IM-SHORAD effort to deliver prototypes in 2019.
