KRONOS STARFIRE showcased on Leonardo’s stand K128 at Euronaval 2018
Leonardo is moving ahead on its development of its X-band (8.5 gigahertz/GHz to 10.68GHz) and C-band (5.25GHz to 5.925GHz) KRONOS STARFIRE naval surveillance radar for several Italian Navy requirements.
The KRONOS STARFIRE forms part of the company’s KRONOS family, and officials told MONCh that deliveries of the first radar, one of the X-band, to the Italian Navy will occur in December, with deliveries of the first C-band variant occurring in the 2020/21 timeframe. The firm continued that, for all intents and purposes, the development of the X-band version of the radar is complete.
That said, additional development work is still required to bring the C-band radar to fruition, with officials continuing that this is expected to be completed in the coming two years. With an instrumented range of circa 250 nautical miles (463 kilometres), depending on the radar’s operating modes, the system is set to equip the Italian Navy’s new PPR Light offshore patrol vessel, which will only be equipped with the X-band variant, while the PPA (Light+), the PPI and the Italian Navy’s new helicopter carrier will all carry an ensemble of X-band and C-band radars.
Dr Thomas WIthington
