Thales GM400 Alpha Radar For Malaysia
French defence heavyweight Thales signed a letter of award with the Malaysian government for the firm’s new Ground Master GM400 Alpha long-range radar. The agreement, signed on Dec 8 by Ministers of Defence from Malaysia and France was a major win for Franco-Malaysian defence cooperation.
Thales’ Country Director in Malaysia, François-Xavier Boutes said: “We are thrilled that Thales’ GM400α radar is selected by the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) to be a strategic asset of Malaysia’s air defence and surveillance systems. This contract is a strong testament to Thales’ leadership in the radar domain and marks a new milestone in the ongoing success story started in 2009 when Malaysia became the launch customer of the predecessor radar, the GM400.
“This new contract reinforces the defence cooperation between France and Malaysia. With historic deep roots in Malaysia, a strong local installed base, Thales is proud to strengthen Malaysia’s air sovereignty.”
Thales will be delivering a GM400 Alpha complete with radar station infrastructure, including access roads, power source, air conditioning, telecommunications systems, radome and associated logistics to the RMAF. It is an upgrade for the RMAF who has been entrusting the safety of Malaysian airspace with the preceding GM400 radar. Its high mobility, high availability, easy upgradeability and seamless integration gives the RMAF and other users enhanced air surveillance and defence capabilities.
Following its successful live evaluations, the GM400 Alpha features five times more processing power and can cover an additional 10% of instrumented range of roughly 515km with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence. Its ability to construct reliable, accurate and the latest Recognised Air Picture (RAP) allows for superior situational awareness always. Moreover, it can simultaneously keep track of a wide range of targets such as jets, missiles, helicopters and even unmanned aerial vehicles that fly close to the ground or attempting to evade radar detection by concealing themselves in clutter near the radar. The GM400 Alpha is in service with over 20 countries. thales/adj/dl (Pix:Thales)