Rheinmetall for Canada: Marine protection system MASS

Rheinmetall has won an important follow-up order from the Canadian Armed Forces. The Navy of the NATO partner country intends to expand MASS protection systems on frigates with a total value of around 20 million CAD (12 million EUR). MASS (Multi Ammunition Softkill System) is an automated decoy system that protects naval ships from threats posed by modern anti-ship missiles.
The project will be realized in close partnership between Rheinmetall at the Fronau site (Bavaria) and Rheinmetall Canada Inc. (Québec) over a total period of four years (2018 to 2022). The Canadian procurement authority has now released the order, of which 6 million EUR each will go to the German Fronau site and Rheinmetall Canada.

Already installed two-launcher systems on the frigates of the Halifax class are to be expanded to a three-launcher system as part of this upgrade. For this purpose, assemblies and components of the MASS systems will initially be brought to Rheinmetall Canada, where they will be assembled and put into operation before being installed on board.

In 2009, Rheinmetall was awarded the contract to equip twelve Canadian frigates of the Halifax class with MASS. The Canadian Armed Forces have also taken out contracts for the accompanying decoy ammunition Omnitrap and MASS Dueras at Rheinmetall.

MASS, including the special ammunition associated with it, is a decoy launcher system developed at the Rheinmetall Fronau site to protect ships against anti-ship missiles. It can be installed on all types of ships, integrated into existing command and weapon systems, or operated as a stand-alone system. Naval forces in 13 countries worldwide currently use a total of 224 MASS launchers to protect their ships, mainly against radar-guided anti-ship missiles, but also against infrared threats and anti-tank weapons in asymmetric threat scenarios.

Recently, Rheinmetall presented two further developments of the system, which once again demonstrate the versatility of MASS. MASS OCR (Offboard Corner Reflector) creates the silhouette of the ship at a safe distance through a special radar signature and reliably misleads even the latest generation of anti-ship missiles. In addition, the MASS Stand Alone variant has a special sensor unit and is ideal for modernizing naval ships or boats.

The system is capable of detecting a missile threat, a target designation through radar and laser guidance beams, or a laser rangefinding measurement at an early stage and, if necessary, automatically defending against it. The countermeasure initiated by the system generates a decoy target that is assessed by the threat as a higher-value target, causing the missile to be misguided. These countermeasures are triggered by MASS autonomously and taking into account wind and navigation data of the ship, as well as information about the type of threat.

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