Nearly two weeks ago I attended the Defence & Security Equipment International 2019 (DSEI19) at the Excel exhibition centre, London.
The intention of this blog is to provide a brief look at what I saw on the day I attended.
Generally, I was more impressed with the smaller companies that I met rather than the larger ones. The larger ones, once they’d read my name badge and saw that I was “Media”, gave me the feeling that they couldn’t wait to get rid of me as I wasn’t there to make a multi-million pound purchase from them. The smaller, or less well known, were far more attentive and provided me with a good amount of information on their products, target audience and hopes for the future.
Whilst this may turn you off from reading the remainder of the blog, I think I’ll start with the things I was a little disappointed with.
One of the companies I was extremely interested in visiting was Barrett Communications. As I’m currently writing an article for Janes on a system very much like one of their products I emailed the UK office in advance to tell them that I was coming and what I was interested in. They did reply and were keen to see I was attending, even sending me a heads up on one their new products that was yet to be revealed. I was, then, very quick to go and see them once the show started.
However, once on the stand, things were very different. As I said above, the media name badge meant I wasn’t a buyer. And despite trying to show keenness on their equipment, which I’d swatted up on before attending, I got the feeling the sales chap just wanted me to leave. On a couple of occasions I was brushed aside so that he could chat or shake hands with a mate rather than carry on showing me some of their products – which are actually very good. Nice gear, not always so good at media relations.
Unfortunately, the same can almost be said with rugged case manufacturer, Peli Products UK. This time I hadn’t emailed in advance, but I sought them out as I am actually in the market for a number of new rugged cases – a new camera case, a 13″ laptop case and a GoPro case.
Whilst this time the guy I spoke to was nice and briefly showed me their new TrekPak dividers – which are pretty cool – I got the impression he didn’t really want to be at the show and he kind of fobbed me off with a brochure rather than trying to sell me the products that I had told him I was interesting in buying. The irony here being that when you go to the TrekPak part of their website, the opening image is that of a rugged case full of camera equipment with “Press” stickers all over them.
In all honesty I could go on about quite a few other companies much like these but I don’t want to have too much of a whinge about the show, so let’s move on to the good stuff.
I obviously paid a visit to the Janes stand first, had a quick coffee and chat – and it was nice to know that they’d heard of me 🙂
Next to the Janes stand was Keysight Technologies, well known manufacturers of Signal Generators, Oscilloscopes and Spectrum Analysers – and many, many other outstanding workbench solutions. I spoke to Radar, EW and Satellite solutions manager Erik Diez, who showed me one of their solutions used to analyse an unknown radar signal with the idea of creating a potential jammer, countermeasure or signal designation. It truly was an interesting chat and the demo of the equipment was very interesting – if only any of it was within my price range 🙂 Saying that, their entry stage Spectrum Analysers etc are comparable in price to the Rigol equipment I have at home.
I enjoyed my time with Erik, with both of us agreeing that when I retire I may be able to buy something from him 🙂
Wondering around, there were plenty of vehicles, weapons systems, EW systems, ELINT/COMINT/SIGINT companies to take a look at. There was a huge Turkish contingent who took over a large area of the north side of the Excel with pretty much all of the above on view.
I had a chuckle to myself as I walked through an area of companies selling UAV’s, straight into another area selling various weapons and systems designed to take drones out.
As well as technical solutions there were clothing/footwear companies – I had a good chat at footwear company Rocky Boots who have some nice military boots.
BAe were there in force with various future ship models, simulators and other technologies. I even bumped into old friend Jamie Hunter on their stand – we calculated that it was over 20 years since we last bumped into each other and travelled to various bases on photo trips.
I would have taken more photos of the vehicles but the stands were generally pretty close and so it made it difficult for photos. Some though I did manage:
I got to play with plenty of weapons. I was very happy on the Sig Sauer stand and spent some time in the pistol area. In comparison to some of the other companies, their handguns felt good and seemed to have a smoother slide – obvs no ammo was available. I was particularly happy with the SP2022 and if given the chance to try it out properly, I’d jump at it.
On a non-live ammo front, an interesting company here in the UK is Ultimate Training Munitions – UTM. They did have a “live firing” area at the show. Instead of being live ammunition however, UTM have created training ammunition that provides a realistic environment without the potential of death. With modifications to real weapons, this ammunition can be used in exercises giving troops/law enforcement agencies the chance to fire near real ammunition at one another and know when they’ve been hit by a projectile that has a plastic cover and a coloured marker.
I’ve got to say it was very good in the small range. I feel like the next time I’m down at Mildenhall I may request a visit.
My final port of call at DSEI was the Rohde & Schwarz stand. This was for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to spend a bit of time there as I knew their products would be very interesting and secondly – they had a bar with free Augustiner-Bräu Helles beer 🙂
The beer was great, one of my favourites on my regular visits to Bavaria. And I had a great chat with Jo who hosted me in the bar and out at the equipment on display.
R&S really do have an amazing input into many of the worlds military radio requirements. For instance, they recently provided the Royal Navy with the first land-based NAVICS radio system for the Type 26 City class FFGHM – with all ships of the class being fitted out with the integrated comms system. This will provide internal and external comms (both voice and data) via an IP network, all of which will be secure. The External VHF/UHF and HF comms will use M3SR Series 4400 and M3SR Series 4100 radios.
As well as VHF/UHF and HF comms, they will also be providing SATCOM and GMDSS systems, along with a joint venture with STS Defence for the Communication masts.
In total, the NAVICS system has been provided to over 40 navies. For the RN this includes the Queen Elizabeth class Aircraft carriers, the River class batch II patrol ships and the above mentioned Type 26’s.
Also of interest was the WPU2000 ELINT Processor, launched at the show.
The WPU2000 is a wideband processing unit – hence WPU – and has a 2 GHz instantaneous real time bandwidth. It is set out to replace the WPU500 which operates with a 500 MHz bandwidth. It collects, then processes and analyses radar signals such as those produced by low probability of intercept (LPI) radars and emissions from Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars. I was told that due to its sensitivity it can detect emmissions that may be invisible to ELINT and EW systems currently in use.
As standard, R&S ELINT and radar direction-finding systems comes complete with identification software, analysis software for ELINT signals, and a database system for radar/ELINT/EW data management.
From what I can gather, the system has had considerable interest. It is still under final tests I believe and will be available in 2020.
So, that’s my DSEI 2019 run down. Not that comprehensive really. I could literally spend months writing about the various pieces of equipment, weapons, radios and software that I spotted and was drawn to. I will follow this blog up very soon with a few individual articles on some of those that really caught my eye.
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