All kinds of good stuff from ILA:2004

– “Austria’s Diamond Aircraft Industries is developing its DA 42 advanced twin-engined tourer for long-endurance surveillance missions.

The new variant, the DA 42MPP (Multi Purpose Platform), will also be further developed into a fully fledged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) within the next two years, said the company…….The great advantage of the DA 42 for such missions is that it is already fully certified for night/IFR operations and flight into known icing conditions. According to Diamond, the basic full-spec DA 42 airframe costs EUR440,000 ($521,000).”

” (source: JDW)

Diamond is working with UOMZ to install the SON 122 turreted E/O system.

– “ThyssenKrupp has agreed to buy Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) from its owner, a US investment bank, in a move that will unite the German naval industry and position it to lead European naval consolidation.” (source: JDW)

– “Germany’s BGT has revealed a previously unknown standoff weapons research and development programme that it is now preparing to take into a further three-year risk-reduction (RR) study phase.

Two baseline concepts exist: HOchleistungs PEnetrator, or high-performance penetrator (HOPE) and HOchleistungs SprengBOmbe, or high-performance blast bomb (HOSBO). Both were designed to meet a German requirement for an affordable medium-range standoff precision weapon. ” (source:JDW)