Rheinmetall and Thales Are Teaming in Germany Within the Field of Unguided and Guided Rockets

Rheinmetall and Thales have signed an agreement to support together the future developments, qualification and production of the 70mm (2.75”) guided and unguided rockets solutions for helicopters as well as potentially other new platforms in Germany.

The Thales 70mm (2.75”) rocket systems are currently operated on UHT Tiger and under certification on Airbus Helicopters H145M. As part of the agreement, Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH will lead the team towards the German customers and use its wide experience as main supplier to the Bundeswehr to ensure the future requirements are met.

The agreement deepens the existing relationship between Thales and Rheinmetall in this field as other members of Rheinmetall Group are working in collaborative integration programs with Thales like on Rheinmetall Canada’s Mission Master UGV.

Together, Rheinmetall and Thales propose important complementary capabilities, especially in the frame of the Tiger MK3 program (guided rocket in “Lock-On-Before-Launch” mode, additional communication between the rocket system and the platform, identification, remote control…)

Torsten Böhm, Senior Vice President ‘Business Development and Sales’, Rheinmetall Waffe Munition:

"The multi-decade experience and quality of the Thales 70mm rockets fit perfectly to Rheinmetall's activities to provide the users in Germany with the best products. The Thales portfolio in this domain is complementary to the current Rheinmetall technical portfolio. This gives the opportunity to combine forces, but more important gives the user direct access to products, meeting the highest requirements on effectiveness, accuracy and safety. And that is our mission."

Stéphane Bianchi, director of the Airborne Armament business segment, Thales:

“This strengthening of the collaboration in Germany between Thales and Rheinmetall is good news for both groups. We will provide our expertise with the 70mm (2.75”) rocket systems, which equip already many platforms in the world, and Rheinmetall the knowledge of the German customer. This is a true win-win, at a time when Airbus Helicopters is developing its Tiger MK3 version.”

NEID will also confirm the presence and measure masses of planets discovered by NASA's recently launched TESS (or Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) space telescope, which detects planets via a different method from NEID: TESS hunts for tiny dips in the light coming from nearby stars, an indication that a planet is crossing the star's face, or disk. This approach can reveal how big around the planet is (information necessary for calculating the planet's density) and, based on the wobble, the length of its "year," or one trip around its star. NEID can also investigate planet candidates found by other telescopes.

Members of the NEID team will discuss the first light results at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu.

The NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research (NN-EXPLORE) partnership funds NEID, short for NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler spectroscopy. NN-EXPLORE is managed at NASA by the Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP), based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The NEID team is led by the Pennsylvania State University with major partners at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Arizona, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech.

The NEID spectrograph was built at the Pennsylvania State University. NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (OIR Lab) was responsible for modifications to the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope to accommodate NEID. The telescope port adapter design was led by the OIR Lab and was constructed at the University of Wisconsin. Additional NEID participants include Carleton College, the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the University of California Irvine, the University of Colorado and Macquarie University.