NULKA Celebrates its Century.
July marks a very important milestone for the collaborative Australian/US Nulka Program with USS Gonzalez (DDG66) being the 100th ship to be fitted with the Nulka Active Missile Decoy System.
BAE Systems Australia have produced over 700 Nulka decoys for the RAN, USN and Canadian navies achieving regular sales of $40-50m per year. This makes Nulka Australia's most successful regular defence export, having earned $700m worth of work in Australia.
The award-winning Nulka system protects naval ships from the threat of anti-ship missiles (ASM). It uses a unique combination of rocket motor and electronic warfare technologies to mislead or seduce enemy missiles away from the target ship.
BAE Systems Australia and its partners in the Program have for many years produced the world's 'gold standard' active missile decoy system - to achieve this milestone is a credit to all those people in industry and Government who have worked on Nulka.
The decoy is assembled in Australia from subsections produced in both the US and Australia. The program originated from DSTO’s early work in ship self defence against new generation missiles such as Exocet.
The production decoy system was developed in Australia with a payload developed in the USA leading to initial sea trials on HMAS Brisbane and USS John Hancock in 1992. The operational system underwent many evaluations at sea leading to introduction into the USN fleet in 1999 and acceptance into RAN service in 2001.
The Australian Defence Materiel Organization (DMO) project manager, Mr Keith Gilby, said Nulka is a very successful collaboration between two Navies and industry.
Nulka has been fitted to 83 USN, 14 RAN and 3 Canadian Navy vessels with a further 50 USN units planned to be fitted in the near future.
It will also be fitted to the Air Warfare Destroyer and is being considered for the Amphibious Deployment and Sustainment vessels.
The Australian and US governments have granted permission to market the decoy system to New Zealand, UK, Japan and seven other NATO member states. Approvals will be on a case by case basis.
Media contact: Defence Media Liaison (02) 6265 3343 or (0408) 498 664
http://www.defence.gov.au/media/DepartmentalTpl.cfm?CurrentId=6823 
Back to Index
Move to Top 
