USA — Demonstration of a Fiber-Ready Laser Interface for U.S. Army

Northrop Grum­man Demon­strates a Fiber-Ready Laser Inter­face for U.S. Army’s Com­mon Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures (CIRCM) Program 

ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. — Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC) announced the suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion of the company’s infrared self-pro­tec­tion sys­tem devel­oped for the U.S. Army Com­mon Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures (CIRCM) pro­gram with a mid-infrared trans­port fiber laser cou­pling, demon­strat­ing the sys­tems’ enhanced Mod­u­lar Open Sys­tem Archi­tec­ture (MOSA).

“The fiber cou­pling of laser jam­ming ener­gy into our jam head demon­strates how this CIRCM sys­tem approach sup­ports both direct cou­pled and remote laser sources,” said Carl Smith, vice pres­i­dent of Infrared Coun­ter­mea­sures for Northrop Grumman’s Land and Self Pro­tec­tion Sys­tems Divi­sion. “As new threats evolve, our CIRCM sys­tem is ready to take advan­tage of advanc­ing laser tech­nol­o­gy to counter emerg­ing threats. While the direct cou­pled laser archi­tec­ture is more mature, effi­cient and pro­vides high­er jam­ming ener­gy today, the fiber-cou­pled approach enables larg­er and more com­plex laser com­po­nents that can­not be mount­ed on the jam head to be used. Our CIRCM jam head inter­face sup­ports both archi­tec­tures offer­ing the best growth options for our warfight­ers in the future.” 

“The company’s mul­ti-band, Viper™ laser, cur­rent­ly in full rate pro­duc­tion, and a small jam head were used dur­ing this demon­stra­tion with pos­i­tive results,” Smith said. were 

The con­tin­ued devel­op­ment and matu­ri­ty for the mil­i­tary air­borne envi­ron­ment of a com­mon fiber inter­face will great­ly facil­i­tate future laser or jam head upgrades as tech­nol­o­gy evolves. The entire sys­tem has been designed from the bot­tom up to use MOSA inter­faces giv­ing the warfight­er more flex­i­bil­i­ty to con­nect to oth­er line replace­able units (LRU) across the inven­to­ry of plat­forms and upgrade indi­vid­ual com­po­nents with­out replac­ing the whole system. 

To date, Northrop Grum­man has deliv­ered over 2,000 IRCM trans­mit­ters and the company’s direc­tion­al infrared coun­ter­mea­sures sys­tem is the only such air­craft pro­tec­tion sys­tem cur­rent­ly in full scale pro­duc­tion and installed on over 500 hun­dred mil­i­tary air­craft to pro­tect approx­i­mate­ly 50 dif­fer­ent types of rotary-wing plat­forms and large fixed-wing trans­ports from heat seek­ing mis­sile attacks. The sys­tem func­tions by auto­mat­i­cal­ly detect­ing a mis­sile launch, deter­min­ing if it is a threat to the air­craft and acti­vat­ing a high-inten­si­ty laser-based coun­ter­mea­sure sys­tem to track and defeat the missile. 

Infor­ma­tion on the Northrop Grum­man IRCM solu­tions show­cased at the Army Avi­a­tion Asso­ci­a­tion of America’s Annu­al Con­ven­tion is avail­able at http://www.es.northropgrumman.com/aaaa/.

Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion is a lead­ing glob­al secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny whose 120,000 employ­ees pro­vide inno­v­a­tive sys­tems, prod­ucts, and solu­tions in aero­space, elec­tron­ics, infor­ma­tion sys­tems, ship­build­ing and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial cus­tomers worldwide. 

Press release
Northrop Grum­man
CONTACT:
Ellen Hamil­ton
Northrop Grum­man Elec­tron­ic Sys­tems
(224) 625‑4693
Cell: (847) 815‑0753
ellen.hamilton@ngc.com