BAE Systems announced on 5 June 2024 that it has received a USD 95 million (EUR 87.3 million) contract from the US Navy for advanced countermeasure pods to protect its P-8A Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft from missiles and other threats.
The electronic warfare (EW) pods detect and counters inbound threats, protecting the Poseidons and their crews and expanding the aircraft’s operating range in contested environments.
“We’re working closely with the US Navy to deliver innovative solutions to protect this critical, high-value aircraft,” Don Davidson, director of Advanced Compact Electronic Warfare Solutions at BAE Systems, was quoted as saying in a company press release. “We quickly prototyped a very capable system using proven technology to defend against air-to-air and surface-to-air guided threats.”
BAE Systems’ survivability pod provides early threat detection and effective countermeasures to protect US and international high-value airborne assets. The system’s flexible, open-architecture design allows rapid and affordable modernisation, is compatible with future threat-detection and decoy countermeasure capabilities and can host third-party EW techniques, BAE Systems asserted.
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,” BAE noted.
The P-8A self-protection pod is part of BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield layered approach to aircraft and ground platform survivability, which uses 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.
Work on the P-8A pod and its components is conducted at BAE Systems’ facilities in Nashua, New Hampshire, and Austin, Texas.
