Belgian Company FN Herstal continues to extend its range of military products and has developed its new FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite that was displayed for the first time during DSEI 2021, International Defense Exhibition in London, United Kingdom.

Belgian company FN Herstal unveils its FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite at DSEI 2021, International Defense Exhibition 2021.  (Picture source Army Recognition)

With its FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite, the Belgian company FN Herstal offers a combat suite that can be integrated on rotary- and fixed-wing airborne platforms to enhance combat capabilities with weapons and EO/IR (Electro-Optical/Infra-Red) systems providing total situational awareness both day and night and in low light conditions.

In 2018, FN Herstal introduced its FN® Airborne Digital Suite comprising: the digital FN® D-HUD Head-Up Display, the digital FN® D-PC Pod Controller and the self-contained fixed forward firing digital FN® D-Pod system.

With the new FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite, FN Herstal adds new weapons and optics allowing airborne platforms to widen the choice of integrated airborne fixed forward-firing weapon solutions with unprecedented firing capabilities.

The FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite integrates .50 cal machine gun in the FN® D-Pod, lightweight rocket launchers available in 7, 12 or 19 tubes able to fire a mix of 70mm laser-guided and/or unguided rockets (such as FZ231 from Thales Belgium) delivering metric accuracy at extended range (exceeding 7 km on static targets) to defeat soft and light armored targets.

The FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite can be fitted with EO/IR ((Electro-Optical/Infra-Red) equipment such as the ultra-long-range electro-optical system Euroflir 410™ from Safran incorporating up to 10 sensors allowing rotary- and fixed-wing airborne platforms to carry out, in any conditions, intelligence, protection, search and rescue missions thanks to a long-range observation and accurate targeting and designation capabilities.

Safran Euroflir™ 410 operates in four spectral wavebands - TV, NIR, SWIR, MWIR – with a wide field-of-view and ultra-long-range observation, allowing it to function at standoff distance any time day or night. The Euroflir™ 410 is specially adapted to the wide variety of missions: supporting law enforcement, homeland security, border and coastal surveillance, intelligence, SAR (Search And Rescue), and CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue).

The FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite allows the integration of multi-functional displays such as the MDU-268V2 display from Scioteq used to select the armaments and display the digital video from the EO/IR.

The FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite allows high-value equipment from several different suppliers to be fully integrated. This gives the customer a very wide range of capabilities to choose from and ensures that they will operate reliably together. FN Herstal, as a weapon systems integrator, once again, has put its expertise and innovation to work to ensure the highest level of operational capability and top-quality service for military forces around the world.

FN® Airborne Extended Digital Suite. (Picture source FN Herstal)