Electronic warfare pods to protect U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon aircraft

BAE Systems received a $95 million contract from the U.S. Navy for advanced countermeasure pods to protect the P-8A Poseidon Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft from missiles and other threats. The electronic warfare (EW) pod detects and counters inbound threats, protecting the Poseidon and its crews and expanding the aircraft’s operating range in contested environments.

“We’re working closely with the U.S. Navy to deliver innovative solutions to protect this critical, high-value aircraft,” said Don Davidson, director of Advanced Compact Electronic Warfare Solutions at BAE Systems. “We quickly prototyped a very capable system using proven technology to defend against air-to-air and surface-to-air guided threats.”

BAE Systems’ survivability pod provides early threat detection and effective countermeasures to protect U.S. and international high-value airborne assets. The system’s flexible, open architecture design allows rapid and affordable modernization, is compatible with future threat-detection and decoy countermeasure capabilities and can host third-party EW techniques.

The engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract follows a rapid-response contract from the U.S. Navy to demonstrate the system in 2021. The BAE Systems team designed, built, and tested a demonstration pod, exhibiting strong military-industry collaboration and rapid prototyping. The EMD contract follows successful airworthiness and effectiveness testing.

The P-8A self-protection pod is part of BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield™ layered approach to aircraft and ground platform survivability that uses the full electromagnetic spectrum to detect, exploit, and counter advanced threats. The pod can be rapidly adapted for other high-value airborne assets, enabling them to operate in contested environments.

Work on the P-8A pod and its components is conducted at BAE Systems’ state-of-the-art facilities in Nashua, New Hampshire and Austin, Texas.