HENSOLDT – Innovations for a safer world
HENSOLDT is a global pioneer of technology and innovation in the area of defence and security electronics. The company is a market leader in civilian and military sensor solutions, developing new products to counter evolving threats based on disruptive concepts in such fields as big data, robotics and cyber security. With a workforce of some 4,300 employees, HENSOLDT generates revenues of more than 1 billion euros per year.
The company’s name HENSOLDT traces back to Moritz Carl Hensoldt, a German pioneer of optics and precision mechanics in the 19th century. Building on the achievements of renowned predecessors such as Telefunken, Dornier, Kelvin Hughes, Siemens Sicherungstechnik and Carl Zeiss Optronics, the company represents a more than 200-year-old European tradition in technology.
HENSOLDT’s success is based on the work of its highly skilled employees that are fascinated by high-end technology and driven by the desire to meet evolving customer needs. In line with the tradition of its predecessors, HENSOLDT’s employees translate technological innovations into smart electronic solutions, which support defence and security organisations in their mission to make the world a safer place. The company considers its employees to be its most valuable asset and, therefore, gives top priority to developing them further.
HENSOLDT’s pursuit of innovation is not only reflected in daily business, but also in the fact that its employees are continuously encouraged to develop new ideas for innovative solutions. Moreover, innovation is also promoted by an agile unit named HENSOLDT Ventures, which has been created specifically for this purpose. This unit, which is not part of the line organisation, ensures that creative business ideas are picked up, assessed and implemented in a start-up environment. In this way, HENSOLDT systematically develops new business opportunities in adjacent market segments.
As a technology leader, HENSOLDT also follows an innovative approach to cyber security. The company develops security-hardened basic IT systems for this rapidly growing area, which are impervious to hacker attacks and inherent hardware weaknesses. Thanks to its long tradition and experience in the field of electronic warfare, HENSOLDT is also optimally positioned as a major player in the cyber warfare environment.
HENSOLDT’s portfolio includes various sensor technologies, which, when combined, allow detection capabilities to be improved substantially. The company’s main areas of activity include the protection of borders and critical infrastructures, air defence, mission management and aircraft self-protection, vehicle protection, signal intelligence and data links, as well as night vision devices, laser rangefinders and optronic targeting equipment. In addition, HENSOLDT’s portfolio also comprises mission avionics such as avionics computers, mission planning systems and autopilots. With its wide product range, HENSOLDT covers all types of applications in air, sea, land and space missions and enables its customers to maintain superiority when it comes to monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum. HENSOLDT solutions are deployed on various platforms, including helicopters, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, ships and submarines, armoured vehicles as well as satellites.
The most prominent air and space platforms equipped with HENSOLDT products include the F-16, Eurofighter, Gripen and Rafale combat aircraft, the Tandem-X and EDRS-A satellites, the A400M transport aircraft as well as helicopters of various types. Furthermore, the company provides mission-critical equipment for the Puma and Leopard armoured vehicles, the class 212 and class 209 submarines, the US Navy’s littoral combat ships of the “Freedom” class, and the German Navy’s K130 corvettes.

ARESYS, advanced Remote Sensing Systems, is a Politecnico di Milano spin-off company, operating since 2003 in the field of digital signal processing with particular focus on remote sensing and geophysics.
ARESYS offers ad-hoc innovative solutions to space-borne, air-borne and ground based remote-sensing problems, exploiting the state of the art technologies and the last academic research achievements in the field, the main application fields being:

• Space-borne and airborne SAR systems (design and optimization of acquisition modes, performance assessment, design of advanced and verification mode processors, design of customized processing solutions for applications in interferometry and precise calibration, support to quality assurance);

• Ground based SAR and interferometers (design and optimization of innovative ground-based acquisition systems, processing, prototyping);

• Seismic prospection and Geophysical modeling (processing and system design);

• Ground penetrating RADAR (design and optimization of GPR based systems, processing);

• Acoustic RADAR and SONAR (design and processing);

• Electronic HW prototyping of advanced sensors.

Nowadays ARESYS can count on a group of around 40 high skilled professionals, composed by top-level engineers, physicists and computing science experts for approximate annual revenues of 3M€.