Sagem (Safran group) has signed a contract to supply 80 Vigy Observer optronic systems for the navy’s new fast interceptor craft. It won the contract against an international field of competitors.
Sagem’s Vigy Observer provides full day-night capabilities for all missions assigned to these high-speed boats: protection of ports and coastal infrastructures, maritime police, the fight against terrorism and piracy, immigration control and fishing surveillance.
The Vigy Observer is a panoramic, gyrostabilized multi-sensor observation system. Featuring a compact, modular design, this innovative system incorporates a cooled infrared imager, three daytime color cameras and a laser rangefinder. It is operated from a touch control terminal.
The decisive factors in the customer’s selection of the Vigy Observer were its inertial stabilization performance on a light, high-speed boat operating at up to 50 knots, its compact, lightweight design, and easy integration.
Manufactured by Sagem’s Dijon plant, the Vigy Observer system also fully capitalizes on synergies with the company’s plants in Poitiers, for optronics, and Montluçon, for inertial technologies. The first systems in this contract will be delivered in 2012.
Sagem’s Vigy Observer is a very cost-effective system, since it incorporates technologies that are already mass-produced and proven in operation, notably the sensors from the company’s multifunction optronic sensors, and mechanical components in the gyrostabilized panoramic optronic turrets made for armored fighting vehicles. An uncooled version of Vigy Observer is also proposed by Sagem.
A new-generation system, Vigy Observer was designed to handle emerging asymmetric threats and meet increasing demand from today’s navies for ocean protection and projection missions, using fast interception craft or offshore patrol vessels (OPV).