Hensoldt has been awarded two contracts worth approximately €10M by the Korean defence company LIG Nex1 to deliver 20 MSSR 2000 ID secondary radars including test equipment and related services. The Identification-Friend-or-Foe (IFF) systems will be integrated with a number of coastal surveillance and air surveillance radars to improve their ability to distinguish hostile from friendly forces, Hensoldt writes in a press release.
IFF systems, so-called Secondary Surveillance Radars, identify aircraft by automatically sending interrogation signals which are answered by so-called transponders on-board friendly aircraft. Thus, IFF enables field commanders to quickly distinguish friendly from hostile forces and helps avoid friendly fire incidents. Unlike Mode 4 used hitherto, Mode 5 employs sophisticated encryption techniques to avoid hostile signal manipulation, thus ensuring that the identification process is reliable and secure. “Mode 5” is in the process of being introduced in all western armies as a precondition of joint operations of US/NATO and allied forces
JH