EADS Defence Electronics and Terma A/S will integrate the EADS Missile Launch Detection System (MILDS) on Denmark's F-16s under a newly awarded contract. The system is due to enter service in 2008 and will be one of the first fast-jet missile warning system (MWS) installations to become operational.
The system combines the AAR-60(V)2 MILDS-F—a repackaged, improved version of today's MILDS, which is in service on transports and helicopters—with Terma's Pylon Integrated Dispenser System (PIDS). On the F-16, a total of six MILDS-F sensors are installed in left and right PIDS pylons located on stations 3 and 7, providing full spherical coverage. It can also be installed in Terma's Electronic Combat Integrated Pylon System (ECIPS), which incorporates Northrop Grumman's ALQ-162 jammer and is used by Denmark and Norway.
EADS sees a large potential market for MILDS-F, says head of fighter sales and marketing Peter Baier. "80 percent of the shootdowns in the last 15 years have been from unobserved shots," he says. MILDS, which uses ultraviolet imaging detectors that see the missile's plume, has excellent performance, in terms of detection and declaration time, and has a lower false alarm rate than IR systems—which can, he says, be set off by a compost heap. U.S. efforts to develop an IR MAWS for fast jets have been abandoned.
In the F-16, the MILDS sensors are controlled by a Terma-developed signal processor installed in the pylon, which passes threat information to Terma's ALQ-213 countermeasures management system. In automatic mode, the ALQ-213 then selects and dispenses flares.
Data collection flights to build a database of threats start this year
on an RDAF F-16. Denmark has ordered 30 systems for its 48 F-16A/Bs.
Five other customers—Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, the
UAE and the USAF Guard and Reserve—have ordered PIDS, all recent
models of which are designed to accept MAWS.
