Israel’s Rafael last week marked the sale of the 1,000th LITENING Pod, one of the world’s leading and most widely-used electro-optic targeting and navigation pods.
“For years, LITENING has been one of Rafael’s premier products, both in Israel and worldwide,” Amiram A., director of the electro-optics systems directorate at Rafael, said in a statement. “LITENING has transformed the field for targeting and navigation operational solutions by fundamentally improving and expanding air force capabilities. We are proud to host our key customers and partners at this event.”
Northrop Grumman [NOC] is the prime contractor for LITENING in the United States and Foreign Military Sales market that represents about half of all LITENING sales.
“We are proud of our cooperation with Rafael and of LITENING’s success,” Mike Lennon of Northrop Grumman added. “For air forces around the world, LITENING plays a vital part in combat capabilities to carry out a wide range of missions.”
Lennon said cooperation between the two companies would go forward with LITENING’s next generation and award of the Advanced Targeting Pod-Sensor Enhancement (ATP-SE).
Used by combat aircraft, LITENING is designed to provide easy to operate, reliable, day and night precision strike capability, in adverse weather conditions.
Rafael celebrated the milestone at a special event attended by senior members of Israel’s defense establishment, company executives, customers, and foreign militaries representatives. Business partner representatives from the United Kingdom’s Ultra Electronics, and Germany’s ZEISS were also on hand.
LITENING pods have been procured by 26 countries and, collectively, the pods have compiled more than a million flight hours, Rafael said. The pods make up more than 50 percent of the world targeting pods in use across a range of ongoing operations for military and international peacekeeping forces.
LITENING was the first pod that incorporated a FLIR sensor with a special wide field of view for Head-up Display during low level night flights.
Other features include a CCD camera for improved daytime targeting, a laser spot tracker, laser target illumination for joint missions with ground forces, and gimbaled INS that enables inertial tracking when the target is obscured. LITENING was also the first pod to feature a bi-directional data link.
With its advanced multi-sensor, multi-mission targeting and navigation technology, LITENING enables fighter air crews to carry out a wide range of precision strikes and close air support missions.
LITENING has a broad range of operational capabilities for ground, and naval targets, both fixed and mobile. It enables tracking of multi-ground and aerial targets simultaneously, and its multiple sensor array provides effective detection, recognition, identification and tracking designed to shorten the sensor-to-shooter cycle.
LITENING’s modular architecture and uniquely-designed LOS control led to the development of the RecceLite system, an innovative tactical real-time reconnaissance pod based on LITENING’s configuration, Rafael added.