Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems and India’s Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for joint induction of an Anti-Torpedo Defence System called SHADE™ for the Indian Navy.

The MoU will be signed on 05 February 2021, during the Aero India 2021 show at Bangalore.

SHADE™ will be the first system in the world to employ a combination of soft kill and hard kill decoys, thereby providing a robust and effective defence against modern torpedoes.

The joint induction of SHADE™ is part of Rafael's commitment to the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliance) initiative of the Government of India.

This MoU will be a precursor for cooperation on futuristic systems for the Indian Armed Forces in India, entailing advanced ToT, and a very high indigenous content, leading to self-sufficiency in the field of cutting-edge technology in defence. This MoU represents an ideal opportunity for industrial cooperation between Israel and India, leading to closer collaboration and co-development of advanced systems in India, the companies said in a joint statement.

Parties will work together to identify joint opportunities for export, subject to export control guidelines of the two governments.

About SHADE™ Soft Kill-Hard Kill Decoy System

The anti-ship missile threats continue to increase and evolve. New missiles are faster, stealthier, more manoeuvrable, and increasingly more intelligent with regard to target discrimination and electronic counter-countermeasure functionality, a development leaving recent generations of hard- and soft kill systems less effective.

The use of hard-kill is further limited with the increasing peacekeeping and controlling activities in littoral waters where the release of weapons frequently is bound by strict engagement rules, but also requiring fast reaction time calling for a high degree of automation. In this situation, soft-kill i.e. decoy  systems, have come to be seen as the non-aggressive self-defence solution, a weapon of least regret.

Decoy systems are today fitted to all naval war vessels ranging from fast attack crafts, mine warfare vessels, frigates to even bigger units as LPD’s as a key element in their electronic warfare suites. Integrated with the ship EW and Radar sensor assets the decoy system will provide fast and intelligent firing of all types  of off-board decoys.

For high value and larger units, the advent of Active Offboard decoys provides improved defence. A further extension of the decoy launching system is to fire acoustic decoys as part of the ship’s torpedo defence suite.

Key System Features Include:

Lightweight launchers with small footprint
Low pressure deck mounts- Effective 360° horizontal coverage
Advanced launch algorithms
Fully automated operation
Support of all countermeasures type decoys
Support of Active Jammer Decoys like BAE's SIREN system
High flexibility and easy integration of user defined algorithms and libraries

The Soft Kill Weapon System (SKWS) is divided into above deck and below deck equipment. A Typical deck equipment consists of launchers, warning horns and safety switches. A ship can be configured from having customisable launchers to fire both mortar or rocket propelled decoy types. Below deck equipment consists of Launcher Interface Unit, Launch Control Computer (LCC) with advanced engagement algorithms, and Control Unit. If required, the system can be configured with additional Control Units, e.g. one in the CIC and one on the bridge.

SHADE™ comprises the ultra-sophisticated Tactician threat modelling computer as well as the SCUTTER™, a self-propelled, reactive and expendable soft-kill acoustic decoy that deploys and self-destructs automatically; and TORBUSTER™, a soft-kill and hard-kill decoy that operates even in shallow waters.