Hensoldt, Rafael partner for naval ECM

A C-GEM offboard active decoy is fired from an Israeli Sa’ar 6 corvette. Rafael has teamed with Hensoldt to offer the German Navy an ECM suite featuring both C-GEM and the Digital Shark onboard jammer. (Rafael)

German sensor house Hensoldt has teamed with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to offer the German Navy a new electronic countermeasures (ECM) suite combining both onboard and offboard jamming components.

Announcing the co-operation agreement on 27 November, Hensoldt said the tie-up was initially aimed at providing the Deutsche Marine with “a solution to close the capability gap in the self-protection of its ships”. According to the company, the teaming seeks to blend knowledge derived from Hensoldt’s own Kalaetron Attack jammer with Rafael’s existing Digital Shark shipboard ECM system and C-GEM active offboard decoy.

Kalaetron is a fully digital electronic warfare product family developed by Hensoldt to meet a variety of airborne self-protection, electronic attack, and signals intelligence missions. As one part of this portfolio, the Kalaetron Attack escort jammer pod combines cognitive software elements (based on artificial intelligence algorithms) with a fully digitised broadband sensor and an electronically controlled/software-defined jammer.