WARSAW — The Czech Ministry of Defense has unveiled plans to acquire 3-D mobile radars from Israel's Elta Systems. The country's government aims to spend about 5.9 billion krona (US $240 million) on the planned acquisition.
Should the two sides Czech government and Elta fail to reach an agreement, potential competitors include defense companies from the US, France and Sweden, local business daily E15 reported.
Under the plan, the procurement is to be carried out by the Israeli company is to fulfill the work in cooperation with local defense company Retia to ensure that at least 40 percent of the contract is handled by the Czech defense industry, according to a Retia company representative.
Delivery of the radars is expected to begin in 2017. Logistics support will be provided to the Czech Armed Forces until 2040.
Last year, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian defense companies announced a project to jointly supply new 3-D radars to their armies with the aim of replacing Soviet-built P-37 radars. The goal would be to enhance the interoperability of the three armed forces, and to ensure the radars are impenetrable to Russian military. However, Prague eventually decided to acquire new radars on its own.
Elta Systems is a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries.
Retia says it develops, manufactures and modernizes radars, missile systems, C4I systems, recording systems, UWB localization and communication systems, the company said.
Email: jadamowski@defensenews.com
Jaroslaw Adamowski is the Poland correspondent for Defense News.
