By B.C Kessner
BAE Systems recently unveiled its Boldstroke directable infrared countermeasures suite (DIRCM), a new integrated aircraft survivability system designed to protect aircraft from infrared-guided missiles and other evolving threats.
“Boldstroke is about more than just the DIRCM solution,” Mark Hutchins, program manager, survivability and protection systems at BAE Electronic Warfare, told reporters recently. “It is about integrated, multi-spectral ASE [aircraft survivability equipment].”
The Boldstroke DIRCM was publicly displayed for the first time during the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting & Symposium in Washington, D.C., Oct. 25 – 27.
There has been significant investment in enhanced missile multi-spectral threat warning products, everywhere from infrared, to ultraviolet, to acoustic, Hutchins said. “Fundamentally, multi-spectral is going to be the solution for the future in order to get the most awareness of your threat environment. It is going to be the way we have to defeat a lot of these threats.”
Multi-spectral, fusion and data analysis are big parts of Boldstroke, a system designed to build on the company’s successful Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (ATIRCM) products, Hutchins said.
Major investment thrusts over the past three years have been aimed at improving DIRCM technologies, hostile fire indication, and adding radar warning receivers and advanced processing capabilities to have more of an integrated ASE capability, he added.
With Boldstroke, BAE has taken over half of the weight out of the fielded ATIRCM system. “Fundamentally this was done by simplification, eliminating seals, moving parts…alignment features, and shrinking a lot of stuff,” Hutchins said.
Boldstroke is designed as a modular, lightweight, highly reliable, and low-cost DIRCM suite, the company said. It uses modular open-system architecture and non-proprietary standard interfaces that support interchangeability and technology insertion. It allows for direct and fiber coupling between the laser and pointer/tracker, providing installation flexibility to meet the size, weight, and power requirements of both light and heavy rotary-wing platforms.
Boldstroke is fully compatible with BAE’s field-proven Common Missile Warning System and consists of flight-proven hardware and algorithms ready for low-risk transition to operational testing, the company said. Its compact pointer/tracker is based on a flight-tested gimbal design and advances laser technology to provide spectral diversity and power margin to address emerging threats.
The system reduces A-Kit and B-Kit weight to maximize aircraft useful payload and increases weapon system availability, providing significant life-cycle cost savings, the company added.
“We’ve been taking what exists and mapping out what aircraft survivability needs to be for the next 20-some-odd years with our customer, and trying to lay that out and develop the appropriate technology and systems,” Hutchins said.
The system is designed to provide full spherical coverage, and the modular nature allows for rapid insertion of additional capabilities, such as a counter HFI capability, and others optical mission packages, Hutchins said.
BAE recently dedicated a new $20 million Worrell/Weeks Aircrew Protection Center, designed for the company and its customers as an unparalleled facility to develop and evaluate ASE solutions in an operationally relevant system and threat environment.