Lacroix supplies navies worldwide with its SYLENA system and/or its advanced naval counter measures, among which are (for example) the Egyptian Gowind-class corvettes, major surface combatants of the French Navy or in Asia, several classes of ROK Navy vessels. The Royal Malaysian Navy will soon be deploy six Gowind-class LCS Frigates as the backbone of its surface fleet. These vessels will be fitted with Lacroix’s SYLENA Mk2 launcher and decoys.
Naval News – Which emerging threats in the region are your naval decoy solutions countering and how ?
Thomas Vermeersch, Lacroix – Since the 90’s, as a direct consequence of the miniaturization of electronic components and the increase of computing capabilities, missile’s seekers have been improved to implement more and more counter-counter-measures (CCM). With the assessment that Chaff technology (RF) and “hot spot” infrared (IR) technology are out of modern Electronic Warfare, LACROIX has developed a new generation of decoys designed to defeat these new CCM (see below).
More recent missiles (2nd and 3rd generation) are not so heavy and get benefits from new technology for seeker electronics and signal processing. That’s why they are more and more present in almost all Asian navies. According to our analysis, third generation missiles represent 50% of the threat and they are considered very proliferent. All these missiles have new technology seekers with capability of chaff discrimination. Chaff remains a WWII technology which is blinding capabilities of hard-kill chain response in the modern EW warfare environment.
This is the reason why LACROIX is offering its UNIQUE technologies and global solution in service namely ;
• SEALEM : RF decoy made with structural corner reflectors,
• SEALIR : IR decoy first generation of morphologic spectral infrared decoy,
• SEAMOSC : Optronic Screening decoy against laser guided threats,
• SEALAT : Acoustic Torpedo counter measure decoy
Naval News – Which Asian navies are fitted with your solutions ?
Thomas Vermeersch, Lacroix – We are marketing our solutions towards several navies in the region and SYLENA systems and ammunition are already on board more than 25 ships worldwide including in south-east asia. Modern navies, engaged in modernization plan of their operational level of capabilities in AAW and ASW domains are considering LACROIX “cutting edge ” technologies.
Naval News – Now that Lacroix is well established in Malaysia, with your regional office in Kuala Lumpur, what is your outlook in the country and the whole SEA region
Thomas Vermeersch, Lacroix – LACROIX is looking for long term commitments. As all our footprints in other region of the world, once we are entering into cooperation with a specific Country’s Armed Forces, our spirit is to be a strategic partner and reliable supplier of the Industrial and technical defence supply chain for many years to come.
