Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace

Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA), one of two operating companies of Kongsberg Gruppen (KOG), is a supplier of defence and space related systems and products, mainly anti-ship missiles, command and weapons control systems, and communications systems.

Today the company is probably best known abroad for its development/industrialisation and production of the first passive-IR homing anti-ship missile of the western world, the Penguin, starting delivery in the early 1970s (when KDA was part of KOG's predecessor Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk).

Space related activities is conducted within KDA itself in addition to its subsidiaries Kongsberg Spacetec (wholly owned) and Kongsberg Satellite Services (50% owned by KDA, 50% by the Norwegian Space Centre), both subsidiaries located in Tromsø. Notable space related products from KDA are the Booster Attachment and Release Mechanisms for ESA's Ariane 5. In the early 1990s KDA was involved, with NASA's JPL and Germany's DASA, in the software development of the test/checkout system for the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens space probe.