Electronic Shield for Air Forces

Sensor solution provider HENSOLDT has developed a modular airborne electronic combat system: Kalætron Attack. By neutralising enemy fire control radars at different distances, it preserves freedom of movement for the air forces that deploy it and their allies, even when faced with state-of-the-art air defence systems. Kalætron Attack is a new addition to the Kalætron electronic warfare product family, which uses fully digitalised hardware and artificial intelligence to detect radar-based threats to air forces in record time and neutralise them with targeted electronic countermeasures (ECM).

“Our Kalætron Integral uses the latest sensor technology to detect radar-based threats early on,” explained Celia Pelaz, Head of HENSOLDT’s Spectrum Dominance & Airborne Solutions Division. “Kalætron Attack now adds an active electronic jamming component, which either dazzles or deceives threatening systems using accurately replicated jamming signals. In this way, Kalætron Attack expands the operational options of fighter aircraft, which can now also operate in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) zones.”

Due to its fully digital design, Kalætron Attack detects and identifies air defence positions very quickly over a wide frequency range. The unit uses artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to recognise new threat patterns from a huge amount of collected pulses. This is especially important for identifying the latest air defence radar systems which cover an extremely wide frequency range or hop between particular frequencies in fractions of a second.

Kalætron Attack can be flexibly adjusted to changing threats using innovative antenna designs with active electronically scanned array (AESA) technology, fully digital signal processing and AI algorithms. The Kalætron product family thus forms the basis for enabling fighter aircraft to not only take on an electronic combat role (ECR) and perform escort jamming for aircraft units, but also to protect them from a great distance away through stand-off jamming. Experience from recent conflicts has shown that such equipment designed to counter the threat posed by the latest air defence systems will be essential for aircraft deployed in the future. With ‘Kalaetron Attack’ HENSOLDT as the German Sensor House would like to provide a national answer to the luWES programme (luWES = luftgestützte Wirkung im elektromagnetischen Spektrum) and contribute substantially to future European defence cooperation programmes such as FCAS.