Niederlande

Northrop Grumman’s Laser Coun­ter­mea­sure Sys­tem Com­pletes Suc­cess­ful Flight Test­ing on Dutch AH-64D Apache Heli­copter

ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., June 18, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Northrop Grum­man Corporation’s (NYSE:NOC) laser Direc­tion­al Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures (DIRCM) Sys­tem has suc­cess­ful­ly thwart­ed a series of sim­u­lat­ed heat-seek­ing mis­sile attacks on a Dutch AH-64D Apache heli­copter dur­ing flight tri­als at Vliehors Test Range in the Netherlands.

The small pod con­tain­ing Northrop Grumman’s laser Direc­tion­al Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures (DIRCM) sys­tem mounts to the end of the stub-wing on the Apache AH-64D attack heli­copter. The sys­tem suc­cess­ful­ly thwart­ed a series of sim­u­lat­ed heat-seek­ing mis­sile attacks on a Dutch Apache heli­copter in recent tests.

The first appli­ca­tion of a self-con­tained, remov­able DIRCM coun­ter­mea­sure pod on a mil­i­tary heli­copter, the tests are part of a major ini­tia­tive by the Roy­al Nether­lands Air Force to upgrade the infrared mis­sile pro­tec­tion of the AH-64D attack heli­copter against the grow­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of mis­sile threats.

The flight tests were per­formed on an AH-64D heli­copter that fea­tured two DIRCM-mod­i­fied Apache Mod­u­lar Air­craft Sur­viv­abil­i­ty Equip­ment (AMASE) pods. Final analy­sis of the data from all 31 flight tests proved the fail­ure-free per­for­mance of the DIRCM sys­tem and demon­strat­ed that all Roy­al Nether­lands Air Force and Northrop Grum­man require­ments were met.

“Not only do these flight tests ver­i­fy that the sys­tem func­tions extreme­ly well as a self-con­tained, remov­able infrared coun­ter­mea­sure pod, but they also lay the foun­da­tion for wide­spread DIRCM sys­tem inte­gra­tion on the Apache heli­copter plat­form,” said Jeff Palom­bo, vice pres­i­dent of Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures pro­grams at Northrop Grumman’s Defen­sive Sys­tems Divi­sion. “This suc­cess­ful demon­stra­tion will also bring us one step clos­er to aid­ing our inter­na­tion­al allies and coali­tion forces in com­bat oper­a­tions abroad.”

The only such sys­tem cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion, Northrop Grumman’s DIRCM coun­ter­mea­sures sys­tem is now installed or sched­uled for instal­la­tion on sev­er­al hun­dred mil­i­tary air­craft to pro­tect more than 35 dif­fer­ent large fixed-wing trans­ports and small rotary-wing plat­forms from infrared mis­sile attacks. The sys­tem func­tions by auto­mat­i­cal­ly detect­ing a mis­sile launch, deter­min­ing if it is a threat and acti­vat­ing a high-inten­si­ty laser-based coun­ter­mea­sure sys­tem to track and defeat the missile.

Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion is a $30 bil­lion glob­al defense and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny whose 120,000 employ­ees pro­vide inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts, and solu­tions in infor­ma­tion and ser­vices, elec­tron­ics, aero­space and ship­build­ing to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers worldwide. 

Text- / Bildquelle: Northrop Grumman’s
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Katie Lamb-Heinz
Northrop Grum­man Elec­tron­ic Sys­tems
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