Textron in Paris

America's Textron Systems and HR Textron are at Le Bourget with a wide variety of products. These range from weapons and munitions, through a mobile microwave landing aid, to a portable and remote area ground surveillance unit, with state-of-the-art sensors, communication and display technology allowing near real-time transmission of data and images.

Main Textron exhibit is its CBU-97/CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon (SFW), which is a direct-strike air-to-surface smart cluster-bomb munition, designed to defeat moving and stationary land combat vehicles within a 30-acre coverage area. Each SFW contains ten BLU-108 sensor-fuzed sub-munitions. These in turn each contain four Skeet smart warheads, any one of which has enough killing power to destroy a land combat vehicle. They also feature redundant self-destruct capabilities to reduce the potential for hazardous unexploded ordnance on the battlefield.

BLU-108 is also the payload for Raytheon's AGM-154B Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW). Increased stand-off range from high-altitude release is planned for the SFW dispenser from a bolt-on LongShot universal wing-kit from Leigh Aerosystems. LongShot allows older aircraft to use smart air-to-ground munitions such as SFW without modifications, and also feature post-launch retargeting capabilities. Textron's Hornet wide area autonomous ground munition further facilitates defense against tracked and wheeled threat ground vehicles.

From southern California, HR Textron is claimed as the world's leading supplier of primary helicopter flight controls and rotary servo drives for tilt-rotor aircraft. Other products include aerodynamic flight controls for tactical missiles, precision-guided munitions and UAVs such as Boeing's Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and Raytheon's AIM-9X next-generation agile short-range AAM.

By John Fricker