Aselsan teams up with Thales for FAC missile upgrades

[Jigs]

Turkey’s military electronics giant Aselsan has teamed with Thales and fast boat builder Yonca-Onuk to develop a compact shipborne launcher system for its Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) collateral precision weapon.

Designed to give fast interceptor craft increased punch, the LMM Missile Launcher System (MLS) combines a two-axis gyrostabilised turret accommodating four ready-to-launch LMM missiles, an off-mount stabilised electro-optical (EO) director (incorporating a laser transmitter unit to support LMM laser beamriding guidance) and a bridgemounted control and display unit. The MLS can automatically slew onto target coordinates assigned by the EO suite.

This configuration, say the three companies, has been engineered to have minimum impact on speed and manoeuvrability of the host platform. Furthermore, MLS turret stabilisation enables missile firing to be unaffected by platform motions.

LMM has been designed by Thales as a low-cost, laser-guided missile able to engage a wide range of air, land and sea targets out to ranges of about 8km. Building on the pedigree of the companys existing Starburst and Starstreak surface-to-air missiles, the new weapon is intended to exploit proven subsystems and technologies while emphasising a value-engineered approach.

A 3kg blast fragmentation/shaped charge warhead has been designed to combine localised effect with good armour penetration.

The laser proximity fuze, using low-cost gate technology set at the point of launch, is designed to ensure that the missile can successfully engage very low metal, semi-solid targets, such as rigid inflatables, which many rockets pass through before detonating.

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