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BAE Systems has confirmed the successful delivery of 400 2-Color Advanced Warning Systems to the US Army as part of the Limited Interim Missile Warning System program to enhance the self-defence capabilities of the helicopter fleet.
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Under the Limited Interim Missile Warning System Quick Reaction Capability (QRC) contract, BAE Systems designed, developed, and delivered 2-Color Advanced Warning Systems (2CAWS) to protect US Army utility, heavy-lift, and attack helicopters, including the CH-47F Chinook, UH-60M Black Hawk and AH-64D/E Apache fleets, respectively.
The 2CAWS suite provides an advanced aircraft survivability systems, having proven itself in combat, defeating sophisticated missile threats and protecting Army aviators and airborne soldiers.
BAE’s solution provides highly effective, next-generation threat detection and warning capabilities that improve aircrews’ survivability, with the systems leveraging a host of modern multispectral sensors, including a high-speed digital backbone and machine learning algorithms to quickly and accurately detect threats in complex environments, and cue laser-based and expendable countermeasures.
Key features of the BAE 2CAWS capability include:
- Designed for harsh rotary-and fixed-wing environments.
- 2-color IR sensors quickly and accurately detect targets.
- Fully integrated with existing countermeasure systems.
- System design targets size, weight, and power (SWaP) needs for US Army aircraft.
- The system processor is built to MOSA standards.
- Low false alarm rate.
Dave Harrold, vice-president and general manager of countermeasure and electromagnetic attack solutions at BAE Systems, highlighted the importance of working with the customer, saying, “We’ve worked closely with Army Aviation to provide cutting-edge capabilities that protect crews from evolving threats, provide adversarial overmatch, and enable warfighters to execute missions in contested battlespace.”
The system builds on the proven missile warning capabilities of BAE Systems’ Common Missile Warning System, which is currently fielded on thousands of US Army and international armed forces’ aircraft and has demonstrated its effectiveness and reliability over millions of flight hours.
2CAWS-equipped aircraft have successfully flown thousands of hours in operational environments. Work on the aircraft survivability technology is conducted at the company’s facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, and Merrimack, New Hampshire.
