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The US Navy has awarded a US$95 million (AU$142.3 million) contract to BAE Systems to provide advanced electronic warfare countermeasure pods to the branches’ fleet of P-8A Poseidon multi-mission maritime patrol aircraft.
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BAE Systems’ survivability pod provides early threat detection and effective countermeasures to protect US and international high-value airborne assets, providing the Poseidons with an expanding operating range in contested environments.
The system incorporates a flexible, open architecture design allowing rapid and affordable modernisation, while ensuring compatibility with future threat-detection and decoy countermeasure capabilities and can host third-party EW techniques.
Don Davidson, director of Advanced Compact Electronic Warfare Solutions at BAE Systems, said, “We’re working closely with the US Navy to deliver innovative solutions to protect this critical, high-value aircraft.”
The engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract follows a rapid-response contract from the US Navy to demonstrate the system in 2021.
The BAE Systems team designed, built, and tested a demonstration pod, exhibiting strong military-industry collaboration and rapid prototyping. The EMD contract follows successful airworthiness and effectiveness testing.
“We quickly prototyped a very capable system using proven technology to defend against air-to-air and surface-to-air guided threat,” Davidson said.
The P-8A self-protection pod is part of BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield, which provides a layered approach to aircraft and ground platform survivability, using the full electromagnetic spectrum to detect, exploit, and counter advanced threats.
The pod can be rapidly adapted for other high-value airborne assets, enabling them to operate in contested environments. BAE’s work on the P-8A pod and its components is conducted at BAE Systems’ state-of-the-art facilities in Nashua, New Hampshire and Austin, Texas.
