BAE Systems said Monday the company has received $71 million in foreign military sales to deliver missile warning technology for aircraft to the Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates.
The company said the four countries have each agreed to contracts to purchase the AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning System (CMWS) as well as additional equipment to improve protection of their aircraft from new missile threats.
“Our customers that fly low and slow in dangerous situations face unobserved threats that can strike without warning in seconds. We level the playing field for pilots and crews with proven threat detection and countermeasures that quickly and automatically engage and defeat threats and help warfighters return home safely,” Cheryl Paradis, BAE Systems’ director of Optical Electronic Warfare Systems, said in a statement.
CMWS provides early-warning missile detection capabilities, including against infrared-guided missiles, and is synched up to cue laser-based countermeasures against incoming threats.
The Army first fielded CMWS in 2005 to assist pilots with missile detection on both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft.
“The system’s rapid response capabilities improve survivability and reduce the cognitive load on pilots enabling them to focus on their missions,” the company wrote in a statement. “The versatile system is designed for a wide variety of aircraft, and its line-replaceable units and customizable algorithms allow it to adapt to emerging threats.”
BAE Systems said the latest version of CMWS is designed to bring together hostile fire indication and data recording into a single system, along with its main missile warning capabilities.