EW countermeasure pods garner BAE Systems $95 million U.S. Navy contract
NewsJune 05, 2024
NASHUA, N.H. BAE Systems won a $95 million U.S. Navy contract to supply advanced electronic warfare (EW) countermeasure pods to protect the P-8A Poseidon multimission maritime aircraft from missiles and other threats; the EW pods are designed to detect and counter inbound threats to protect the Poseidon and its crew plus expand the aircraft’s operating range in contested environments.
According to the BAE Systems contract announcement, the survivability pod provides early threat detection and effective countermeasures to protect high-value airborne assets using a flexible, open architecture design that is capable of rapid and affordable modernization, compatible with future threat-detection and decoy countermeasure capabilities, and can host third-party EW gear.
The recent Navy engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract follows a 2021 rapid-response contract from the U.S. Navy to demonstrate the system in 2021, under which BAE Systems team designed, built, and tested a demonstration pod.
The P-8A self-protection pod is part of the BAE Systems "Intrepid Shield" approach to aircraft and ground platform survivability, which makes use of the full electromagnetic spectrum to detect, exploit, and counter advanced threats.
Work on the P-8A pod and its components is being carried out at BAE Systems facilities in Nashua, New Hampshire and Austin, Texas.
