Raytheon to prime in U.S. Army's CIRCM with quantum-cascade-laser-based system
Washington, DC--In response to the U.S. Army's Common Infrared Countermeasures (CIRCM) request for proposal, Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) will pursue a prime-contractor role with hardware based on a rugged quantum-cascade laser (QCL). CIRCM will protect combat helicopters and other aircraft by jamming the IR guidance systems of heat-seeking missiles and diverting the missiles away from the aircraft.
Raytheon's CIRCM solution, known as Scorpion, will combine the company's production-matured directed IR countermeasures turret with the rugged QCL.
"Raytheon's Scorpion leverages the Department of Defense's multibillion dollar investment in the production of air-to-air missile seekers and the commercial world's development of quantum cascade lasers," said Mike Booen, Raytheon's vice president of Advanced Security and Directed Energy Systems. "By combining a light-weight, highly reliable quantum cascade laser with fiber coupling hardware, the Scorpion system provides the best solution for the Army's CIRCM requirement."
Scorpion has a mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) rate considerably higher than any other system on the market, says Raytheon. Minimizing impact on mission availability, a high MTBF rate results in less maintenance, reduced ownership costs and significantly less downtime.
"Raytheon's Scorpion is designed with the warfighter in mind," said Booen. "The weapon's open system architecture makes it compatible with the majority of missile warning systems on combat aircraft platforms in operation today."
Raytheon began developing the Scorpion system in 2005. During range testing, the company demonstrated the pointer tracker's ability to acquire, track, and defeat IR missiles in flight with 100% success. Raytheon also flew its prototype CIRCM system on a UH-1 helicopter. While flying in an operationally relevant environment, the prototype detected, tracked, and applied laser energy to a simulated threat. The system met all performance requirements from a variety of distances, altitudes, airspeeds and bank angles, says Raytheon.
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John Wallace | Senior Technical Editor (1998-2022)
John Wallace was with Laser Focus World for nearly 25 years, retiring in late June 2022. He obtained a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University and a master's in optical engineering at the University of Rochester. Before becoming an editor, John worked as an engineer at RCA, Exxon, Eastman Kodak, and GCA Corporation.