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2017-12-05

Elettronica builds on a long-standing relationship with the UAE

Nation Shield sat down with Massimo Antonio de Bari, Head of Elettronica Group - UAE Office and Business Development Gulf, on the sidelines of the Dubai Airshow 2017, to discuss the company’s unique relationship with the UAE, its latest products and future plans.

The renowned electronic warfare provider and manufacturer, Elettronica, put the spotlight on a number of their key product offerings at the Dubai Airshow 2017.

Massimo Antonio de Bari, Head of Elettronica Group - UAE Office and Business Development Gulf, said: “The Middle East market is of paramount importance to Elettronica. We are proud to be at the Dubai Airshow and have been participating since its first edition. The company has a long history in this country and our first contract here was in 1984. The UAE represents a strategic partnership for us since then and was the first market we worked with in the region. We keep working with the UAE Armed Forces and institutions on several projects. The relationship that we have with the country is unique because it’s more a strategic partnership rather than a set of commercial arrangements.”

He added, “For short-term future plans, we are hoping to be part of the new naval projects the UAE is planning to achieve.”

Power of systems

Some of the products Elettronica displayed at the show included the Directional Infrared CounterMeasures (DIRCM) system as well as the Escort Jammer Pod and the Anti-Drone Interception Acquisition Neutralization (ADRIAN) system. The DIRCM system is designed to provide a reliable and effective protection of rotary and fixed wing aircraft against current and future Infra-Red threats (i.e manpads). While the Escort Jammer Pod is a fully integrated system, intercepting and automatically processing radar signals, managing the power transmitters to effectively jam several radar threats with high Effective Radiated Power (ERP).

Massimo de Bari highlighted: “The main task of the Escort Jammer is to perform a comprehensive advanced warning and countermeasures cycle against any hostile threats, which engage the attacking forces and adjacent flight formation and to enhance mission success.

To meet such demanding requirements, EDGE is designed to provide both individual and mutual protection to combat aircrafts. The support we received from the Italian Air Force to develop this system was hugely important.”

The ADRIAN system (Anti-Drone Interception Acquisition Neutralization) is the company’s state of art Counter-UAV solution designed to intercept and neutralise LSS (Low-Small-Slow) UAV in multiple scenarios and environments.

“Traditional sensors and countermeasures may be not effective or not applicable in urban warfare. Therefore ADRIAN is based on multispectral sensors (Radar, EO/IR, acoustic and radio link interceptor) performing data fusion for detection and identification. ADRIAN architecture is modular and can be tailor-made depending on operational, environmental and cost/effectiveness requirements.” said Massimo de Bari. “This is something that can have a lot of applications, from the military to the law enforcement perspective. So far, the response to it has been very good. We perceived huge interest from different kind of entities, also because the company delivers live demonstrations of ADRIAN showing how the system is able to take the full control of the detected drone. We expect demand for ADRIAN in this country and the entire region.”

Highlighting cyber solutions

In 2014 Elettronica and Expert System created a joint venture company, CY4GATE, to address the fast converging market of electronic warfare and cyber intelligence solutions. The joint venture is headquartered in Rome.

“At the core of CY4Gate lies an integrated engineering convergence between the electromagnetic spectrum, wireless, wired networks, and operating systems,” said Massimo de Bari.

“Today CY4GATE is able to provide a range of solutions for intelligence, law enforcement and Electronic Warfare Departments for superior, fast and comprehensive analysis of structured and non-structured data streams from ELINT to Tactical/Strategic COMINT and Open Source (OSINT), virtual Humint, Meta Data Analysis, Data Mining and Fusion, all integrated within both passive and active defensive cyber applications.”

One of the products Elettronica is promoting in the region is related to the intelligence system called D-SINT (Digital and Spectrum Intelligence Integrated System), an integrated platform using a modular, scalable and open architecture providing all functionalities for analysing and handling structured and non-structured multi-media, multi-format, multi-sensor information.

Massimo de Bari highlighted: “D-SINT has been designed to manage and support the intelligence full cycle, easing the extraction of information from large volumes of data enabling the effective use of human resources and thereby shortening intelligence response time. The presentation and dissemination tool (called AMICO) represents the smartest and fastest way to provide enriched and meaningful information to decision-makers.

“It combines superior text analysis and ontology capabilities with the ability to explore, correlate, merge and manage large quantities of unstructured data from documents, web pages, social networks, etc.”.

“D-SINT is very useful not only for intelligence purposes in military and law enforcement environments, but it can also be provided in a different version for business intelligence, allowing companies to exploit the platform capabilities to achieve their informational goals. Many companies, also in UAE, are successfully operating the D-SINT solution and we expect others opting for it,” said Massimo de Bari.

The company also has a different approach when it comes to training for cyber products. It has signed a comprehensive agreement with a private university in Rome (LUISS) that offers dedicated academic classes along with lots of hands-on practice.

Massimo de Bari said, “People will be put in real critical situations and provided with the know-how and tools to counteract in order to increase their skills to manage the crisis. The Cyber Academy is addressed to a large variety of parties, from the Armed Forces to the police department., law enforcement agencies and private institutions.”

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