BAE receives $95M contract for electronic warfare pods on Poseidon aircraft

BAE Systems has received a $95 million contract from the Navy to design electronic warfare advanced countermeasure pods that will allow the P-8 Poseidon aircraft to detect and counter incoming threats.

The engineering and manufacturing contract follows “successful airworthiness and effectiveness testing” of the pod system, according to a BAE news release issued Wednesday.

The aircraft is the Navy’s maritime patrol plane, used for reconnaissance, anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare.

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

The system will allow for modernization, compatibility with future threat detection, decoy countermeasure capabilities and third-party EW techniques, according to BAE. Work on the pod system will be done in Nashua, NH and Austin, TX.