India acquires 164 Rafael Litening targeting pod

Rafael will supply 164 examples of its Litening targeting pod to the Indian air force, for use on four types of combat aircraft including New Delhi’s Sukhoi Su-30 fighters.

Guy Oren, director of Rafael’s electro-optical systems unit, says the pods will be delivered in the next couple of years.

The company adds that the new version doubles up as a surveillance and reconnaissance system in addition to being a targeting pod.

Rafael Litening 5 targeting pod is currently be integrated on Airbus Defence & Space owned Eurofighter combat aircraft and likely will be offered later to all Operators of Eurofighter fighter jets.

Indian air force has been using Litening 3 Pods on Sukhoi-30KI, Mig-29, Mirage-2000, Jaguar and Indigenous developed LCA-Tejas and last year India placed order for 150 Litening G4 for its frontline fighter aircraft, including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-29 and others.

Litening 5 maintains same dimensions and form which means new Pod can be integrated into different aircraft types among existing customers with ease and evaluation is part of product demonstration effort to make aware of the new products capabilities said sources close to idrw.org which doesn’t mean immediate orders .

Rafael dubs Litening 5 as intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance system which uses two FLIRS a Mid-wave infrared and Shortwave infrared which comes with color CCD HD-TV which vastly improves target recognition and separation of man made objects which are usually harder to spot .

In February it was announced that the planned Litening acquisition would fall under a larger $500 million deal between India and Israel, which would also see the Rafael Spice 250 precision-guided bomb provided to New Delhi.

 

What is Litening Pod?
LITENING targeting pod is an Israeli-designed precision targeting pod system currently operational with a wide variety of combat aircraft. LITENING significantly increases the combat effectiveness of the aircraft during day, night and under-the-weather conditions in the attack of ground and air targets with a variety of standoff weapons (i.e., laser-guided bombs, conventional bombs and GPS-guided weapons).

LITENING is an integrated targeting pod that mounts externally to the aircraft. The targeting pod contains a high-resolution, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor that displays an infrared image of the target to the aircrew; it has a wide field of view search capability and a narrow field of view acquisition/targeting capability of battlefield-sized targets. The pod also contains a CCD camera used to obtain target imagery in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. An on-gimbal inertial navigation sensor establishes line-of-sight and automatic boresighting capability.

The pod is equipped with a laser designator for precise delivery of laser-guided munitions. A laser rangefinder provides information for various avionics systems, for example, navigation updates, weapon deliveries and target updates. The targeting pod includes an automatic target tracker to provide fully automatic stabilized target tracking at altitudes, airspeeds and slant ranges consistent with tactical weapon delivery maneuvers. These features simplify the functions of target detection and recognition, and permit attack of targets with precision-guided weapons on a single pass.

 

Source :- Flight Global