CASSIDIAN’s identification systems protect French Armed Forces

• Reli­able iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pre­vents casu­al­ties from friend­ly fire
• France is engaged in NATO’s “Mk XIIAS” upgrade pro­gramme for the retro­fit of IFF systems

Here you can find more infor­ma­tion about:  The French Defense Indus­try – Mar­ket Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Entry Strate­gies, Analy­ses and Fore­casts to 2016

July 2012 – Cas­sid­i­an, the defence and secu­ri­ty divi­sion of EADS, will sup­ply the French Armed Forces with advanced iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems used to pre­vent friend­ly fire. The French defence pro­cure­ment agency (Direc­tion Générale de l’Armement – DGA) recent­ly award­ed Cas­sid­i­an a con­tract to sup­ply 150 units of its new­ly devel­oped MSR 1000 I inter­roga­tor (MSR = Monopulse Sec­ondary Radar) for the short-range friend-or-foe iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (IFF). The first units will be deliv­ered by mid-2014. They are des­tined for instal­la­tion on the Army’s MISTRAL mis­sile launch­ers and MARTHA air defence com­mand and con­trol sta­tions as well as on the armoured launch vehi­cles of the Air Force’s CROTALE NG mis­sile. The con­tract is a part of the IFF NG (New Gen­er­a­tion) oper­a­tion, which sets out to devel­op equip­ment com­pli­ant with NATO’s new Mode 5 inter­op­er­abil­i­ty stan­dard. This will offer the French Armed Forces the option of upgrad­ing their platforms. 

“This con­tract is of strate­gic impor­tance for the future,” stress­es Bruno Ram­baud, Head of Cas­sid­i­an SAS in France. “It makes Cas­sid­i­an the Euro­pean ref­er­ence for short-range and very short-range IFF NG inter­roga­tors and it is a spring­board to oth­er mar­kets, as the NATO allies will all even­tu­al­ly migrate to the new IFF stan­dards.” The MSR 1000 I is a suit­able prod­uct for many plat­forms requir­ing Mode 5 such as Stinger, the Ger­man LeFlaSys or the British HVM. 

The MSR 1000 I will be able to quick­ly and safe­ly iden­ti­fy air­craft by using high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed encryp­tion tech­niques to avoid hos­tile sig­nal manip­u­la­tion, thus over­com­ing the lim­its of the present IFF sys­tems and facil­i­tat­ing com­man­ders’ deci­sions whether to engage air­craft or not. At the same time, a new civ­il mode S can thus be used by both civ­il and mil­i­tary author­i­ties. Mode S actu­al­ly helps to man­age the grow­ing vol­ume of civ­il air traf­fic, improv­ing the effi­cien­cy of flight con­trol by address­ing air­craft with their unique iden­ti­ty code. 

Cas­sid­i­an has deliv­ered IFF inter­roga­tor sys­tems to sev­er­al NATO nations for ground and naval appli­ca­tions. Amongst oth­ers, the long range MSSR 2000 I pro­tects all Ger­man Navy ships as well as UK Roy­al Navy ships and the French Navy’s BPC com­mand ships. In Ger­many, Cas­sid­i­an has estab­lished the air traf­fic con­trol net­work of the Ger­man Luft­waffe cov­er­ing an air­space of 1,700 x 1,500 km. In total, Cas­sid­i­an has more than 350 sys­tems in approx. 30 nations under con­tract, includ­ing in the U.S.

About CASSIDIAN (www.cassidian.com)

Cas­sid­i­an, an EADS com­pa­ny, is a world­wide leader in glob­al secu­ri­ty solu­tions and sys­tems, pro­vid­ing Lead Sys­tems Inte­gra­tion and val­ue- added prod­ucts and ser­vices to civ­il and mil­i­tary cus­tomers around the globe: air sys­tems (air­craft and unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems), land, naval and joint sys­tems, intel­li­gence and sur­veil­lance, cyber secu­ri­ty, secure com­mu­ni­ca­tions, test sys­tems, mis­siles, ser­vices and sup­port solu­tions. In 2011, Cas­sid­i­an – with around 28,000 employ­ees – achieved rev­enues of € 5.8 bil­lion. EADS is a glob­al leader in aero­space, defence and relat­ed ser­vices. In 2011, the Group – com­pris­ing the Divi­sions Air­bus, Astri­um, Cas­sid­i­an and Euro­copter – gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of € 49.1 bil­lion and employed a work­force of more than 133,000.

CASSIDIAN – Defend­ing World Security 

Con­tact:
Lothar Belz
Tel.: +49 (0)731 392‑3681
lothar.belz@cassidian.com