Leidos wins $69 million contract for aircraft electronic warfare defenses

The Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded Leidos a $68.6 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract to develop and test electronic warfare defenses that protect aircraft from incoming threats over the next four years, according to a Feb. 3 notice.

"This program will conduct innovative research and development to design expendable (ordnance) and directed-energy (signal) countermeasure concepts, in electro-optical and multi-spectrum electro-optical/radio-frequency domains, in response to an ever-changing missile threat landscape using threat exploitation; modeling and simulation evaluation; and hardware and field testing," the release states.

The program is part of a broader AFRL initiative experimenting with signal sensor technologies across the electromagnetic spectrum and multiple domains. The Air Force is actively pursuing these types of capabilities to maintain air superiority in well-defended battlespace where dominance in a single domain is not assured.

The larger research effort will solicit proposals for contracts collectively worth $397 million, according to a notice AFRL released in July 2020. The award Leidos won was just the first, and it’s unclear when the lab may begin requesting offers for new ones.