Targeting pods – a must on combat aircraft
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עברית (Hebrew)
The Israeli air force was one of the first to use targeting pods. First these were the ones that were supplied with the American made fighter aircraft that Israel purchased, but at some point the locally made ones proved their superiority. In a parallel process foreign air forces discovered the capabilities of the Rafael Lightening targeting pod and sales increased.
These systems have become crucial to every combat mission and as the importance grew, the demand soared and so is the competition between the main manufacturers. What was considered until some 20 years ago as a luxury is now becoming almost a baseline for advanced air forces. The new technologies, combined with the operational experience of the Israeli air force resulted in the contiguous upgrade of the Rafael system.
So after some upgrades to existing versionsת the Rafael Lightening 5 targeting pod will become fully operational at the end of 2016. The new version will have a large aperture color CCD sensor that will enable to detect targets in “very long ranges”. The IR sensor will also be upgraded.
According to Rafael, the new version is not only a targeting pod but also an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) system. Rafael has not changed the pod’s dimensions but allowed for an easier stationing on different types of aircraft. The miniaturization of some of the components has left two empty spaces in the pod and that allow customers to use it for dedicated, in many cases classified, features.
“the systems is now carried on 25 different aircraft” Guy Oren , director of Rafael’s Electro Optical systems said, and added that by using the MatchGuide – a unique Rafael global orientation system – the Lightening 5 is capable of accurate designation exchange between remote video sources in real time. In addition, the system enables precise coordinate extraction of a selected video pixel or marking of known coordinates on a live video in real time.
MatchGuide closes the operational gap for the precise geographical information exchange between battle participants. The system enables designation of entities such as targets, threats, friendly forces and national infrastructure on the sender’s video display, then sending them to the receiver.
The Litening G-5 will be offered by Rafael and Northrop to the U.S navy when the force opens the tender for an advanced targeting pod.
