LM Awards Indra Contract to Equip 4 Saudi Ships With State-of-the-art Electronic Defence Systems

Indra has signed a contract with Lockheed Martin to equip the four Multi-Mission Surface Combat Ships (MMSCs) which will be delivered to the Royal Saudi Arabian Navy with an advanced state-of-the-art electronic defence system capable of detecting the presence of any platform and classifying it by threat level.

The 118-meter-long vessels with a range of 5,000 nautical miles are prepared for coastal and ocean operations and meet the requirements of the most modern navies. They will be fitted with Indra's Rigel Electronic Support Measures system (Rigel EW suite), which will be responsible for detecting and analyzing radar signals from other vessels in the area of operations, identifying and classifying them to determine the level of threat they represent. This critical information enhances a ship's survivability in hostile environments, ensuring maximum situational awareness and responsiveness and providing invaluable intelligence for the entire Saudi fleet.

For Indra’s Land and Naval Systems Director, Jaime Temes, "our Electronic Warfare capacities, with state-of-the-art systems, allows us to be part of such ambitious and demanding defence programs as this one. We feel very proud to work together with Lockheed Martin and SAMI in the development of these four ships for the Royal Saudi Naval Force, one of the most prominent and larger projection navies of the world. "

To carry out this project, Indra will have the support of SAMI-AEC a subsidiary of SAMI, an industry-leading technology and manufacturing enterprise specializing in the Defense and Aerospace, Digital, Energy, and Security sectors in Middle East, with whom it maintains a collaboration agreement in the field of naval EW to provide this critical technology to the Royal Saudi Naval Force. This program represents the consolidation of this collaboration that began with the Avante 2200 corvette program and represents a significant increase in local EW capabilities.

Indra and Lockheed Martin have also had a long-standing collaborative relationship since the 1990s, when Indra began developing components of the Aegis system for Spain, the US and other countries. On January 19, this relationship was strengthened after Lockheed Martin's international vice president, Ray Piselli, and Indra's CEO, José Vicente de los Mozos, signed an agreement to analyze business opportunities in any area of defense and geography.

Indra has also supplied electronic defense systems to the Spanish Navy and the navies of Germany, Norway, Italy, India, South Korea and Mexico, among others. It has worked with some of the world's leading shipyards, such as Navantia, Italy's Fincantieri, Germany's Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (tkMS), Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Holland's Damen.