Sponsored by Control Solutions LLC.
http://www.controls.com/product-cat/systems/
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06 Dec 17. Leonardo’s Sales of Artillery Aiming Systems Are On-target With EUR 50m Exports in 2017. Leonardo has announced sales this year of over 150 units of its ‘Linaps’ artillery pointing system and over 100 FIN 3120 Inertial Navigation Units (INU), worth together more than 50m Euros, signalling a sustained level of interest in the company’s artillery airming systems. Linaps, which can be adapted to fit any existing artillery, mortar or MLRS platform provides highly-accurate weapon management and navigation, without reliance on GPS. The system is being seen by customers worldwide as a cost-effective way to significantly enhance the capabilities of both modern and legacy systems.
Linaps provides an artillery platform with a sophisticated fire-control capability, allowing forces to fire both indirect or direct with a very high level of accuracy. This precision reduces the potential for collateral damage and significantly limits the risk of friendly fire. Every new Linaps contains a FIN3120 Inertial Navigation Unit (INU), a gyro-based system which precisely measures the gun platform’s location, azimuth and elevation. The FIN3120 system is also available separately for customers who want to add the sensor element of the system to a platform that already has other elements of a fire control system built-in, such as a man-machine interface.
Linaps has been in service for a number of years with the British Army, Canada, New Zealand, UAE, Oman, South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia. Linaps was the first digital system to be deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan on the UK L118 Light Gun and the Canadian M777. Platforms carrying Linaps include BAE Systems’ 155mm M777 lightweight howitzer, M109 and 105mm L118/L119 light guns, Denel Land Systems’ G5/G6 155mm towed artillery systems. Linaps is a battle-proven system. It can be designed to be fitted to any platform, avoiding the need for extensive hardware modifications to an existing platform. (Source: ASD Network)
06 Dec 17. Poland has sticker shock over ’unacceptable’ price tag for Patriot buy. Poland has been pushing toward a purchase of a medium-range air-and-missile defense system for many years, settling on an unprecedented configuration of the Patriot system, but was surprised by the high price tag presented when the U.S. State Department cleared the sale of half of the Patriots Poland plans to buy.
According to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, when it notified Congress last month of the potential sale, the deal could cost the country $10.5bn for four systems — that is roughly 37bn zloties — which already exceeds by 7bn zloties what Poland has said it would spend on the entire program.
The DSCA announcement only marks the progress in the first phase of the acquisition. Poland would like to see a second round of Patriot systems with a 360-degree detection capability and the first four retrofitted with the new radar in a subsequent deal.
“The high cost came as a surprise for us,” Bartosz Kownacki, secretary of state in Poland’s Ministry of National Defense, told Defense News in a Dec. 5 interview in Washington.
“The price is indeed unacceptable for us even in the view of the significant financial assets that we allocated for the technical modernization of the Polish Armed Forces,” he said through a translator. “We cannot simply afford to spend that much money on the procurement of two batteries and [Patriot Advanced Capability]-3 missiles for such an amount of money.”
The offer from the U.S. included 16 missile launchers, four sector radars and 208 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles.
The possible sale is a long time coming with Poland and the U.S. struggling through complicated negotiations over the past several years.
Poland began its “Wisla” competition to procure a medium-range air-and-missile def