The US Air National Guard (ANG) has taken a big step in the direction of acquiring Leonardo’s BriteCloud 218 lively decoy to guard its Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters, after issuing a so-called fielding advice.
Announcing the event on 24 November, Leonardo says the step follows the conclusion of a three-year international comparative take a look at (FCT) course of by the US Department of Defense. This concerned intensive ground-based and airborne trials of the expendable self-protection tools.
Leonardo says the fielding advice alerts that the ANG is “confident that the decoy meets and, in some instances, even exceeds operational requirements”. Its potential buyer’s declaration additionally represents “one of the final stages of the programme and gives the green light to BriteCloud 218 as proven effective and fit for operations”, the corporate provides.
“It looks like it’s passed with flying colours,” Wayne Smith, Leonardo UK’s vice-president gross sales, digital warfare, says of the excellent FCT course of.
Loaded right into a fighter’s present chaff and flare dispensers, the BriteCloud spherical “delivers a major upgrade in aircraft protection compared to traditional expendable countermeasures”, Leonardo says. The model produced for the F-16 has dimensions of simply 2x1x8in, however “employs a sophisticated on-board electronic warfare capability designed to counter radar-guided threats”, it provides.
Accompanying the ANG’s endorsement of the corporate’s know-how, the BriteCloud 218 additionally has been given a proper tools designation to be used by the US army: the AN/ALQ-260(V)1.
In addition to a potential US procurement to equip the ANG’s examples, Smith tells FlightGlobal: “We have really high interest and demand from other F-16 users and other platforms, from NATO [nations] and beyond. We are in close discussions with a number of potential buyers.”
Leonardo additionally identifies the Boeing F-15 and F/A-18, plus the US Air Force’s Fairchild-Republic A-10, as amongst appropriate candidates to hold the decoy, and touts its “latest-generation threat protection and extremely low integration costs”.
The BriteCloud 218 has additionally already been examined for the German defence ministry utilizing a goal unmanned air automobile, and deployed from a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems-designed self-protection pod carried by the airframer’s MQ-9 Reaper.
Leonardo’s drinks can-sized BriteCloud 55 is already operational with the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoons and will probably be carried operationally by the Saab Gripen E.
“We have built up a high level of confidence in the system for Typhoon with the 55[mm] format, and now we are getting the same level of confidence from the end user for the 218 format for the F-16,” Smith says.
“Combat air has been our focus, and that is the highest interest to date,” he says. However, he provides that curiosity within the BriteCloud 55T – a model of the bigger design optimised for carriage by transport plane and utility helicopters – has risen because the Russian army’s late-February invasion of Ukraine.
