This post is also available in:
עברית (Hebrew)
Modern anti-ship missiles are becoming increasingly difficult to defeat. Equipped with radar, infrared, laser or electro-optical seekers, many can identify and track their targets with high precision, leaving warships with only seconds to react. While hard-kill systems attempt to destroy an incoming missile, another layer of defense focuses on convincing the weapon to strike something else instead.
Kuwait has selected Rheinmetall’s Multi Ammunition Softkill System (MASS) to protect eight new Al Dorra-class guided-missile patrol vessels, adding an advanced decoy capability to its future fleet. Rather than intercepting incoming missiles, the system launches specially designed decoys that create false targets, causing a missile’s guidance system to lock onto the decoy instead of the ship.
The system is designed to counter a wide range of missile guidance technologies. Depending on the threat, it can deploy multispectral decoys that imitate the ship’s signature across several parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This enables the system to deceive radar-guided, infrared-guided, laser-guided and electro-optically guided missiles, making it more difficult for their seekers to distinguish the real vessel from the false target.
According to Interesting Engineering, the contract also includes Omnitrap-ER, the company’s latest expendable decoy ammunition. Compared with earlier generations, the new decoys offer a longer deployment range and improved flight characteristics, allowing them to create more convincing false targets at greater distances from the protected ship. This is particularly important against modern imaging radar and infrared seekers, which analyze target shape and thermal signatures in greater detail than older missile guidance systems.
Another feature of the system is its modular architecture. The launcher can be installed on different classes of naval vessels, from offshore patrol ships to larger frigates, and can either operate as part of a ship’s combat management system or function independently. This flexibility simplifies integration into both new vessels and existing fleets undergoing modernization.
Soft-kill technologies such as this have become an increasingly important component of layered naval defense. Instead of relying on a single defensive system, modern warships combine electronic warfare, decoys and kinetic interceptors to maximize their chances of surviving missile attacks. Successfully diverting a missile before it reaches the ship also preserves interceptor missiles for situations where deception alone is insufficient.
Deliveries of the systems and decoy ammunition are scheduled to continue through 2029 as part of Kuwait’s largest naval procurement program in more than 15 years. The project reflects the growing emphasis many navies are placing on survivability technologies as anti-ship missile threats become more sophisticated and widespread.
