M-SHORAD to include above-armour sights

21st July 2021 - 17:15 GMT | by The Shephard News Team

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US Army Stryker A1 vehicle with M-SHORAD equipment installed. (Photo: US Army/Cpt Jordan Allen)

L3Harris is providing fully digital WESCAM MX-GCS sights for installation on US Army vehicles in the Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense programme.

L3Harris Technologies announced on 21 July that it has received a contract from Moog to deliver WESCAM MX-GCS sighting systems for Increment 1 of the US Army Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) programme.

Deliveries to Moog will begin in 2021. The value of the deal was undisclosed.

L3Harris will provide a total of 33 fully digital above-armour sighting systems, each of which will be integrated onto the Moog Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform (RIwP) turret.

General Dynamics Land Systems is the prime contractor for M-SHORAD. The programme is designed to defeat mortars, rockets, short-range missiles and aerial targets such as UAVs and helicopters.

MX-GCS comprises a fully stabilised two-axis sensor gimbal that is capable of traversing 360 degrees and elevating through an arc of -71 to +74 degrees. Housed within this gimbal are an HD CMOS camera, a 3-5μm staring array thermal imager and a Class I eye-safe laser rangefinder.

According to Shephard Defence Insight, the laser rangefinder operates on a wavelength of 1.54μm at 1Hz with a maximum effective range of 10km.