01/27/2009
 

Rheinmetall Air Defence

The new name of air defence specialist Oerlikon Contraves

 
Rheinmetall Air Defence AG: endowed with an expanded range of competences, Oerlikon Contraves AG began trading under this name since 1 January 2009. Headquartered in Zurich, the company is a global leader in short-ranged air defence. It is also an essential component of Rheinmetall's Air Defence unit, the division that unites the Group's full spectrum of air defence activities.

Rheinmetall Air Defence AG now offers the company's global client base a complete array of air defence assets ranging from stationary cannon-based systems to mobile guided missile-supported solutions, together with sensor technology and associated networking solutions.

For decades, products from Oerlikon Contraves AG have been synonymous worldwide with high-performance, high-precision cannon-based air defence. Armed with an expanded portfolio, Rheinmetall Air Defence will continue in future to be a robust and reliable partner of the world's armed forces, drawing on its unsurpassed expertise as a supplier of air defence system solutions featuring a variety of different effectors and total system approaches.

The company has around 1,050 employees at locations in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Canada. Sales came to roughly €380 million in 2008.

The globally renowned Oerlikon brand name will live on in connection with a series of important products: Oerlikon Skyshield, Oerlikon Skyranger and Oerlikon Skyguard represent the global cutting edge of air defence technology. A guided missile system previously marketed internationally under the name Asrad-R – closely related to the Bundeswehr's LeFlaSys – will in future be known as the Skyarcher Asrad-R.

Now being developed by Rheinmetall Air Defence on behalf of the Bundeswehr, the NBS C-RAM is a sophisticated very short-range air defence system for protecting forward operating bases and similar military installations from rockets, artillery and mortars.

Thanks to the Oerlikon Skyshield C-RAM system and its revamped Air Defence division, Rheinmetall now sees itself as well on the way to meeting the company’s strategic objective of expanding its leading role in technology for neutralizing small and very small targets and close-range air defence.

The process of force transformation now underway around the globe has prompted the company to broaden its focus beyond classic air defence to mobile systems with multi-mission, multi-role capabilities.

Autonomous systems are increasingly being networked with products of the Oerlikon Skymaster family, boosting their performance and efficiency through intelligent BMC4I (battle management, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) applications.

In the domain of naval air defence, too, Rheinmetall Air Defence is zeroing in on asymmetric threats. Together with other divisions of the Rheinmetall Group (especially Defence Electronics), it is developing complete maritime defence systems. For example, the Oerlikon Seaguard system is an ideal sensor-effector network for protecting ships from terrorist threats.