DRS Systems Inc., Melbourne, Florida, is awarded a $120,009,046 not-to-exceed, cost-plus-incentive-fee, firm-fixed-price, cost undefinitized contract to provide non-recurring engineering to design, develop, integrate and test engineering development models and production representative models of weapons replaceable assemblies for the AN/AAQ-45 Distributed Aperture Infrared Countermeasure system. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (U.S. Navy) funds in the amount of $23,497,884 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity.
The DAIRCM is an aircraft protection system developed by DRS Technologies (now Leonardo DRS) that combines missile detection, hostile fire indication, and situational awareness with a missile defeat capability that detects incoming threats and can counter and jam them. Spun out from technology originally developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the system uses a single sensor for two-colour infrared (IR) missile warning and wide field of view gimbal for laser-based directed IR countermeasures. The AN/AAQ-45(V), DAIRCM, is at the forefront of aircraft defensive protection technology and was developed by Leonardo DRS.
