Indian Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and Israeli defense company Rafael are teaming up to provide SHADE torpedo defense system for the Indian submarines.
Indian Ministry of Defence Rajnath Singh signed a memorandum of understanding with Rafael officials at Aero India 2021‘s scheduled opening ceremony on Friday.
Rafael said in a statement that joint induction of the anti-torpedo defense system is a part of its commitment to the Indian government’s ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliance) initiative. It also said that it is an ideal opportunity for India and Israel’s industrial cooperation and collaboration on advanced systems.
“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 defense against modern torpedoes”. the officials of Rafael added.
About SHADE :
Shade is a torpedo defence suite for submarines that protects submarines from attacks by all types of acoustic homing torpedos.
Based on operationally proven systems, Shade automatically selects appropriate defense programs and selects preprogrammed anti-torpedo countermeasures. It comprises consisting of three components: a defense programmer, a launcher controller and up to 32 launchers for firing up to 32 decoys.
The system can launch and operate several types of hard and soft kill torpedo countermeasures, such as the Torbuster, a hard kill torpedo countermeasure that seduces the torpedo to close proximity, activating warhead when the target is at the closest point of approach, inflicting sufficient damage to the torpedo to neutralize it.
The Subscut and the Scutter are both torpedo countermeasures, that are launched immediately following a torpedo alert and are automatically initiated after launch. They propel themselves to a preset depth where they hover, waiting to detect active acoustic transmissions. The measure results in the selection and generation of an appropriate deception program from the transmission.
To learn more about the SHADE system click here.