The Elettronica S.p.A.’s philosophy, as referred to by its founder Filippo Fratalocchi, rotates around a key word that reflects and embodies the absolute commitment towards pursuing prefixed objectives. The word is: Innovation. We can write it on a blank page, in capital letters with the attempt to gather its greatness, its feeling of accomplishment, but without achieving any results since the concept of Innovation is endless.
The late Steve Jobs stated that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” and with this same spirit Elettronica has been active for over 60 years, working today, thinking about tomorrow, pushing on and imagining things that would ultimately be conceived, walking on thread suspended between the present and future, ceaselessly seeking the breakthrough that will widen its horizon. The human mind that attends upon technology remains one of ELT’s basic principles, it was thus at its outset in 1951 and it is still so today.
“In a highly competitive market niche you can’t afford to be runner up, but you must always get their first – explains the CEO Mr. Enzo Benigni – and to do so you must be at the forefront and invest in Research & Development. Neutralizing a threat implies knowing what’s happening, and transforming this know-how into a realistic undertaking.”
Confirming Elettronica’s leadership in the EW sector are its Hi-Tec products, among which two of its last generation systems stand out, exploiting highly advanced design features: the Integrated EW System and the EW Manager. The first one, that bears the name of Virgilius, is an advanced, fully integrated Electronic Warfare airborne system also suitable for Air-to-Air and Air-to-Surface operations. It is conceived to perform emitter detection, classification, identification and to counter a large threat variety including: radar controlled Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA), Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM), Air-to-Air Missiles (AAM), Early Warning, Search and modern Multifunction Radars. Virgilius is a complete break-through in the traditional approach to ESM-ECM system design drawing on all the possible advantages of the state-of-the-art technology, stressing the signal processing technique and market component availability aspects to deliver a superior integrated product.
The second one is a key element of modern self protection suites for aircraft and helicopters and ensuring an effective management of a large number individual on-board sensors and countermeasures resources. In a dense environment it often results difficult and time consuming for the pilot to extract the right information at the right time in order to activate a prompt and effective response. The solution is the multi-sensor / multi-actuators integration provided by the Electronic Warfare Manager. All situational awareness and self-protection subsystems are linked to a single coordinating system. The crew is provided with a unique multispectral picture of the scenario ensuring a clear and improved situational awareness. The current status of the platform and all available countermeasure resources are taken into account. Besides the Controller capability the EWM features an added value integration level that will interpret data from on-board sensors exploiting correlation opportunities to obtain enhanced situation awareness and generating a more effective response and coordinated countermeasure actions.
Elettronica has always allocated private and considerable investments in research for the purpose of developing its Hi-Tec assets, so as to achieve the utmost in-house capability; the ownership of employed technology allows a more complete, timely and unrestricted relationship with the Customer, as well as to continuously update the latter on any new product developments.
Another key to Elettronica’s success, is constantly scouting young talents that can integrate with the great ELT family: 763 employees adhering to the same philosophy. “There is no business, strategic agreement, or achievement that can make me more proud than when I see the twinkle in the eyes of a new employee. – says Mr Benigni – A sparkle that in time will turn into a creative technological miracle at the service of a country’s defence.”
