A subsidiary of Elbit Systems of America will supply the US military with firing sensors that can be mounted on watch towers, surveillance balloons, unmanned vehicles and more.
Logos Technologies announced a $19.4 million deal for its Serenity hostile fire detectors late last month. The five-year agreement also takes into account maintenance and operating costs throughout the US Africa Command.
Serenity combines electro-optical and acoustic sensors to locate the origin of gunfire and weapons explosions up to 6 miles away. It can be combined with wide-area moving images, or WAMI, a device for documenting parts of land over extended periods of time.
“Serenity can guide the WAMI system to a specific area of interest – say, the location of an enemy mortar team – and then the WAMI system can track their movement across the battlefield, as well as ‘go back in time’ ” and discover their original staging area,” said Doug Rombough, vice president of business development at Logos, in a statement.
Serenity systems are already in use by US troops, Rombough added, and a rapidly deployable version for international forces is under consideration. The Army Research Laboratory is also looking at a smaller version of Serenity that can be mounted on a gyroscope, according to the company.
Counter-terrorism missions across the African continent involve many countries and their forces. The area is plagued by violent organizations linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. Additionally, coups in Mali in 2020, Burkina Faso in 2022, and Niger in 2023 have complicated US Defense Department operations and aid programs there.
Elbit Systems of America is itself part of the Israeli company Elbit Systems, the The 21st largest defense contractor in the world when classified by defense-related revenue. Elbit Systems earned nearly $5 billion in defense revenue in 2022 and about $4.8 billion in 2021, according to Defense News Top 100 analysis.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration – specifically Cold War liquidation and nuclear weapons development – for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award winning photographer.
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