A Full-Spectrum Approach To Platform Survivability

Today’s warfighters must conduct missions in highly contested battlespaces where it is only a matter of time before they are detected by adversaries and targeted by their weapons.

“The battlefield has changed and legacy approaches to platform survivability have become less effective,” said Dan Harrison, Technology Director within BAE Systems Countermeasure and Electromagnetic Attack Solutions.

Threats to aircraft, vehicles, and ships today rely on the electromagnetic spectrum for sensing and guidance. Hostile missile systems detect electromagnetic energy including radio-frequency (RF) and electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) energy. These sensors can be countered with the right approach to platform survivability – including signal jamming, sensor blinding, spoofing signals, decoys and other countermeasures.

The key to battlefield survivability is a layered approach that uses the full electromagnetic spectrum regardless of the threat. A single system isn’t enough to provide adequate protection. A layered threat detection, countermeasure, and electronic attack approach is required to counter adversaries’ kill chains, enable freedom of maneuver, and improve our warfighters’ survivability and lethality.

Intrepid Shield^TM Approach

“Our Intrepid Shield approach is a concept for providing platform protection against today’s most capable, evolving and future multi-spectral threats,” said Harrison.

BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield layered, full-spectrum approach to platform survivability creates a 360-degree protective sphere around platforms and helps armed forces understand, exploit and use the electromagnetic spectrum. It combines capabilities to detect, exploit, and quickly defeat advanced threats in highly contested battlespaces.

“Intrepid Shield systems detect threats, quantify their lethality, and provide capabilities to defeat them via a variety of means. And the systems evolve as threats continue to evolve,” continued Harrison. “They can be scaled to work for a variety of platforms, from slow-moving ground vehicles and ships to rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, tankers, cargo planes, and other high-value airborne assets.”

The Intrepid Shield products are complementary and provide a layered defense. They prevent adversaries’ use of the electromagnetic spectrum, deny their ability to target friendly platforms, detect enroute threats, and defeat them in the end game. Intrepid Shield capabilities can break communications links, deny radars, and provide critical countermeasures.

“Deny, degrade, defeat.” said Harrison. “Our goal is to provide full electromagnetic spectrum dominance to our warfighters so they can execute their missions and come home safely.”

The Intrepid Shield systems provide superior situational awareness and platform survivability. The approach builds on a proven portfolio of threat warning, threat suppression, and countermeasure systems that counter threats day and night in all weather across air, land, and maritime domains.

“The Intrepid Shield capabilities can be provided for any kind of platform and deliver capabilities across the electromagnetic spectrum, providing a shield that enables freedom of maneuver, supports mission success, and improves survivability.”

The diverse portfolio includes advanced long-range sensors, self-protection pods, decoys, air-launched effects, kinetic and non-kinetic countermeasures, high-powered jamming and reconnaissance capabilities. The capabilities can be scaled and integrated in optimum combinations for different platforms and missions, and can be provided for many nodes across the battlefield to increase the layered effect.

By combining traditionally separate EW capabilities, BAE Systems is creating new operational effects to support platform protection, situational awareness, and kill chain support.

BAE Systems is a leader in full-spectrum electromagnetic warfare, delivering electronic attack and self-defense solutions as well as comprehensive threat analysis, modeling and simulation, and product life cycle support. The company can quickly design, develop and manufacture advanced systems for a variety of platforms and missions.

For more information about BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield approach, visit: Countermeasure and Electromagnetic Attack Solutions.