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As part of the USA’s $120+ billion “Future Combat Systems” program, BAE Systems has awarded a phased subcontract worth up to $70 million to Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems business in McKinney, TX, to develop the “hard-kill” Active Protection Subsystem (APS) for the U.S. Army’s FCS Manned Ground Vehicles (MGVs). “Hard-kill” elements include armor and counter-munitions against rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds, top attack munitions and tank-fired kinetic energy (KE) rounds. In contrast, “soft-kill” systems include electronic countermeasures such as jammers, smoke/obscurement, “signature reduction” multi-spectrum camouflage, and decoys.
RPGs represent a ubiquitous threat, especially in urban warfare conditions that are found in theaters like Iraq or Iran and expected to be the “new baseline” for US forces. Countermeasures to date have mostly included “active armor,” which uses an outward-facing blast when hit that disrupts the warhead’s plasma jet; and/or slat armor, which detonates warheads before they hit the vehicle’s main armor and so “misfocuses” the shaped charge. Both systems can be defeated by dual warhead designs like the Russian RPG-27, however, which was recently forecast to have the largest share of international production in its class between 2006-2014.
DefenseTech covers the procurement decision in depth, and notes that the Raytheon’s system is not expected to hit the field before 2010, whereas Rafael’s competitive Trophy system is already past the testing stage and headed for field installation. Note that Trophy is NOT a “force field,” – see this article for a good description of what it does. The Raytheon “hit to kill” APS is expected to use a similar approach. It is slated for a number of future vehicles, as well as present vehicles like the Stryker et. al…
The U.S. Navy’s EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare/jammer, which will remain America’s only tactical jamming aircraft until the EA-18G Growlers arrive around 2009-2010. These aircraft carry an installation of advanced computer equipment and power systems, antennas, and special jamming pods. Armed with precision attack weapons and/or anti-radar missiles like the AGM-88 HARM, the Prowlers are used for a wide variety of tasks, from attacking enemy air defense installations, to flights over roads in Iraq to suppress IEDs by jamming their electronics.
DID recently covered major ICAP III upgrades to the Prowler’s key electronic warfare systems. Now the U.S. Navy’s NAVAIR has contracted with BAE Systems to produce additional low-band transmitter-antenna groups for the Navy’s EA-6B Prowler electronic countermeasures aircraft. Under the $24.3 million contract with the Naval Air Systems Command, the company will provide 13 transmitter-antenna groups, each consisting of a radar and communications jammer. Work will be performed at Lansdale, PA. The contract follows a $4 million producibility program awarded in October 2004 and previous production orders. Including this most recent order, the Navy has called for BAE Systems to produce a total 30 transmitter-antenna ship sets worth about $55 million.
Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure Inc. in Baton Rouge, LA received a $24.4 million firm-fixed-price contract for Design, Construction, and Renovation of a G-2 Intelligence Headquarters Command Building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Work is expected to be complete by Nov. 18, 2007. There were 34 bids solicited on Feb. 17, 2006, and 10 bids were received by the U.S. Army Engineer District, Afghanistan (W917PM-06-C-0006).
