The U.S. Army Clears Full-Rate Production Of Northrop Grumman’s CIRCM (Common Infrared Countermeasures)
May 6, 2021 Helicopters
Stefano D'Urso
The new CIRCM system will equip all the service’s current helicopters, beginning from the UH-60M Black Hawk, and the Future Vertical Lift helicopters in development.
The U.S. Army awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to begin the full-rate production of the laser-based Common Infrared Countermeasure (CIRCM) system on April 30, 2021. The firm-fixed-price contract, worth slightly less than 1 billion USD, will procure an unspecified number of CIRCM systems to equip all the helicopters currently serving in the U.S. Army, beginning from the UH-60M Black Hawk, as well as the winners of the competitions within the Future Vertical Lift program, which will replace the current helicopter fleet.
CIRCM, which is being pitched for all rotary wing, tilt-rotor and small fixed-wing aircraft across the Defense Department, is a lightweight dual-jammer Directional Infrared Counter Measures (DIRCM) system designed specifically to protect aircraft from InfraRed-guided missiles. Northrop Grumman says that the system is built on open architecture to work with existing hardware and uses a compact pointer/tracker, a lightweight Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) processor and advanced Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) technology for greater reliability and scalability.
https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/06/northrop-grumman-circm/
