Helicopter Protection Enters New Era

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Helicopter Protection Enters New Era
Aviation Week's DTI | David A. Fulghum | November 12, 2009

The Defense Department is kicking off a program to design, build and demonstrate prototypes of the Joint and Allied Threat Awareness System (JATAS) to protect U.S. Navy and Marine Corps helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft from dumb and smart weapons.

The two current competitors are Lockheed Martin and the team of Alliant Techsystems (ATK), BAE Systems and Goodrich. The teams were awarded two 16-month Navy contracts.

JATAS is to be the core of a system that can grow -- as technology and funding allow -- to detect and later retaliate against small arms fire and shoulder-fired rockets as well as surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles.

Digital integration among operational forces in the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force – after generations of talk, but little success – is showing surprisingly vibrant signs of life. A key concept behind JATAS is to better network the information that is collected by a growing package of advanced sensors.

Demand for the missile-detection capability is being accelerated by the heavy volume of automatic small arms fire often encountered in Afghanistan and by the availability on the black market of Russian-built SA-16 Gimlet, SA-18 Grouse and SA-24 Grinch man-portable, air defense missiles.

Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,205756,00.html?wh=wh