Army pays nearly $5 billion for massive defensive upgrade to helicopter fleet

The Army is scaling up its helicopter defenses with nearly $5 billion for new anti-missile laser systems.

Last week, the Army awarded Northrop Grumman $4.8 billion to produce laser-based missile defense systems for its Common Infrared Countermeasures, or CIRCM, program. 

The countermeasures are designed to protect against threats like shoulder-fired Stinger missiles. After receiving a notification from the missile warning system, the system tracks the incoming munition and jams the sensor, “degrading the tracking capability of the missile and causing it to miss the aircraft,” Army budget documents describe. 

“The Army’s plan is to equip all Army rotary wing aircraft with CIRCM,” Ellen Lovett, a spokesperson for the service, told Task & Purpose. “Other services have shown interest in CIRCM but are in the early review stage.”

This would mean new laser defense systems for the Army’s Apache, Blackhawk, and Chinook helicopters and the new MV-75 Future Long Range Assault Aircraft. As of 2023, the Army had nearly 3,700 rotary-wing helicopters, but since then the service has announced major cuts to its aviation fleet in the move towards more unmanned aircraft and drones. 

“For operational security reasons we cannot share how many systems have been fielded to date, but more than 700 systems have been delivered,” Lovett said.

An Army aviation mission survivability officer who has flown with older laser defense systems in combat said the new system is basically a “different solution for the same technology.” He said the “arms race” of missile technology has meant that aircraft defense systems have also needed to evolve. 

To thwart incoming attacks, helicopter pilots historically relied on dropping a “cocktail” of multiple flares as a decoy to attract “heat-seeking missiles” away from their aircraft, the pilot said. But having the aircraft equipped with this technology, he added, is an overall better option.

“It’s the best solution we have now because the magazine is unlimited. I can shoot down missiles all day long with CIRCM,” the officer said. “Once I’m out of my flare bucket, I’m gonna get shot by a missile.”

The pilot said the whole scenario happens in half a second, so for a Man-Portable Air-Defense System, or MANPADS, missile faster than the speed of sound, laser defense is “way faster than my ability as a pilot to drop a countermeasure, specifically a flare.”

The Army had initially awarded a $959 million production contract to Northrop Grumman in April 2021. The nearly $5 billion contract now pays for the company to supply the service with its latest helicopter defense technology through 2035. The contract will support new laser systems for the Army as well as foreign militaries who purchase them from the U.S., according to Lovett.

“The recent contract award from the Army sustains full‑rate production of CIRCM,” said Leah Hooten, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s multispectral threat detection technologies. “The contract provides a long‑term framework to keep equipping Army helicopters with CIRCM, while preserving flexibility for the Army to adjust quantities over time.”

Hooten said CIRCM is installed on over 550 Army Apache, Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters. 

“While the fundamental concept — using a precision‑pointed laser to disrupt the missile seeker — remains the same, the system itself has advanced substantially. CIRCM incorporates upgraded hardware and sophisticated software to counter the latest threats,” Hooten said. 

The Army officer said when he was a new pilot in 2011, the service was introducing Northrop Grumman’s larger laser system — which pilots referred to as “R2-D2” since it resembled the character from Star Wars. The new CIRCM system replaces the Army’s Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasure System, in use for 16 years, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the major limitations of the older laser system was the weight, according to the Army. 

On a Chinook, the older system weighed around 160 pounds. But according to Northrop Grumman, their new CIRCM laser system now weighs 50 pounds. 

“That dramatic reduction in weight helps minimize impact on aircraft performance, simplifies integration on multiple platforms and supports broader adoption across the fleet,” Hooten said.

The infrared missile threats facing helicopters are not only an Army problem. A similar Air Force contract to equip its HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue helicopters with infrared countermeasures was released in April. An Air Force Materiel Command Sources Sought notice said the lack of a countermeasure system “significantly increases the risk of infrared-guided missile engagement, jeopardizing mission success, aircraft survivability, and crew safety.”