Bombardier Defense and Leonardo are teaming up to explore offering a new maritime air surveillance package.
The defence arm of the Canadian aerospace manufacturer, which also makes business jets, would supply its Bombardier Global 6500 twin-engine jet platform; the defence prime would seek to integrate its ATOS mission system onto the aircraft.
The Global 6500 aircraft has a 6,000-nautical-mile range, can fly for up to 18 hours at a time, and has a top speed of Mach 0.9 — just under 600mph.
The two firms have just signed a non-exclusive Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at the Paris Air Show “to explore new opportunities in the Maritime MMA (Multi-Mission Aircraft) capability market,” as per a Leonardo press statement.
As per the Bombardier Defense website, its jets’ “endurance, reliability and class-leading range” make them “ideal” for maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks. It said its Global range of aircraft “offer impressive loiter time, best-in-class power generation… and state of the art avionics features such as Synthetic Vision System (SVS).”
Meanwhile Leonardo said the planned aircraft would benefit from “a fusion of Leonardo’s top-tier ATOS mission system with multi-mission versatility, integrating Leonardo’s customizable mission sensors, and installed upon Bombardier’s platform delivering a comprehensive, integrated surveillance solution” including “state-of-the-art acoustic, mission systems, and sensors.”
As per the Leonardo press statement, Bombardier Defense “has previously delivered more than 500 specialized aircraft for a variety of missions in defence, security and humanitarian operations,” while Leonardo “offers unparalleled expertise in mission systems, sensors, and self-protection equipment, embedded into proprietary and non-proprietary platforms.”
- You can read more details on the Leonardo website and the Bombardier Defense website
