The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth nearly $1 billion to equip its helicopters with infrared jammers designed to blind incoming heat-seeking missiles.

Northrop will build common infrared countermeasures (CIRCM) for Army combat helicopters through April 2026 under the $959 million contract awarded April 30. Northrop was the sole company to bid for the contract, according to a Defense Department announcement.

The Army plans to buy more than 1,000 CIRCM suites for the AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook. Designed with an open-architecture backbone that allows both integration onto various aircraft and future software and hardware upgrades, CIRCM also likely will protect the Future Attack Recon Aircraft (FARA) and Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) from enemy anti-aircraft weapons.

CIRCM integrates defensive IR countermeasures capabilities into existing, current-generation aircraft to engage and defeat man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) and vehicle-launched missiles. The CIRCM system — which consists of a pointer-tracker unit, an infrared laser and processor unit — is part of a suite of IR countermeasures that also includes a missile warning system (MWS) and a countermeasure dispenser for flares and chaff. 

The system is designed to “interface with both the Army’s Common Missile Warning System (CMWS) and future missile warning systems (MWS) to defeat current and emerging missile threats that use multispectral technology for rotary-wing, tiltrotor and small fixed-wing aircraft,” according to the Army’s fiscal 2021 budget document. “CIRCM jams the missile by using modulated laser energy in the missile seeker band, thus degrading the tracking capability of the missile and causing it to miss the aircraft.”

The Army in March greenlit full-rate production of Northrop’s CIRCM following a successful six-month initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E). To date, more than 150 units have already been delivered under IOT&E, Bob Gough, Northrop’s vice president for navigation, targeting and survivability, told Vertical. In July 2022, the company expects to begin delivery of 126 systems in the first-year delivery contract. Those units should all be delivered by July 2023, Gough said.

“We anticipate ordering quantities to reach over 600 systems under the complete five year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ),” Gough said.

During initial operational test, the Army put the countermeasure systems through 2,303 flight test events. At the finale event at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, it demonstrated the ability to defeat as many as four incoming threats at a time. 

“CIRCM’s cutting-edge capability has been proven against the most advanced threats and the modular open systems architecture approach brings flexibility for the future,” Gough said. “Northrop Grumman and our partners have proven the mature production capacity to deliver and support the U.S. Army’s mission with this life-saving technology today, and for years to come.” 

Northrop also builds the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures systems for the U.S. Navy. In April received a $115 million contract to supply more of the systems for Navy and allied rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft.