BAE Systems and Leonardo UK have been approved by the U.S. government to develop an aircraft survivability suite.

Intended to improve aircraft survivability against advanced threats, the capability will contain BAE Systems’ AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning Systems and Leonardo’s Miysis Directed Infrared Countermeasure system, BAE Systems announced from Nashua, New Hampshire on Wednesday.

“This layered defense against new and advanced threats will protect aircraft and their crews in the most complex battlespaces. Using interoperable, combat-proven systems is a smart, efficient, and cost-effective aircraft survivability solution for our international customers,” said Chris Austin, director of integrated survivability solutions for BAE Systems.

The AN/AAR-57 CMWS is currently being used in the rotary- and fixed-wing fleets of the U.S. Army and its partner nations to detect approaching hostile fire and missile threats, alert crews and automatically begin countermeasures.

Over 3,000 of these systems have been installed on more than 30 varieties of aircraft, accumulating above four million total combat flight hours for CMWS.

Leonardo-built Miysis DIRCM provides reliable, continuous protection from Infrared Man Portable Air Defense Systems by surprising a missile seeker head with an overwhelming stream of coded laser energy that is able to defeat multiple threats concurrently.

Existing CMWS operators will be able to cost-effectively add the DIRCM capability using the combined offering, which will enhance the effectiveness of CMWS flare decoying and increase aircraft survivability with the directed infrared countermeasure system.

“The AN/AAR-57 CMWS is in service on thousands of platforms worldwide, making it highly complementary to our readily exportable Miysis DIRCM,” said Tony Innes, vice president of sales radar and advanced targeting at Leonardo.

Since the AN/AAR-57 CMWS is already installed in thousands of platforms globally, Innes said, its current customers now have a “fast, simple and low risk way” to integrate DIRCM protection into their platforms.

Heidi Shyu, undersecretary for research and engineering at the Department of Defense and a 2023 Wash100 winner, has issued a memorandum announcing the establishment of a new task force within the Defense Science Board tasked with identifying operational and weapon system concepts as part of efforts to restore the U.S. armed forces’ operational dominance.

The task force on strategic options will operate as a subcommittee of DSB and will look at advanced undersea assets and operational concepts, new countermeasures for electronic warfare, new uses of space assets and cyber weapons employment, according to the memo publicly released Monday.

“Additional considerations should include the adversary’s use of countermeasures to undermine U.S. dominance in the air, space, sea and cyber domains,” the document reads.

The task force will conduct a study within 30 days of the initial appointment of members and will present its findings and recommendations to Shyu and to the board for deliberation.

Shyu said she will sponsor the task force, whose members will be given access to DOD officials and data for them to carry out their activities.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown said the service branch intends to commit more funding in future budgets to the use of unmanned aircraft that will fly alongside with crewed platforms, Breaking Defense reported Monday.

“We’re getting down the path to to have much more capability for uncrewed aircraft,” Brown said at an event Monday.

“I think you’ll you’ll see as we start looking at our future budgets and the analysis we’re doing as part of the operational imperatives that we are committed to more uncrewed capability,” he added.

USAF’s Next Generation Air Dominance program includes the development of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft or a set of semi-autonomous drones that would fly with a sixth-generation fighter aircraft.

Brown noted that the service intends to have the Collaborative Combat Aircraft fly alongside F-35 and other fifth-generation fighter jets.

“As we look into our future budgets, there’s three aspects of this. There’s the platform itself, there’s the autonomy that goes with it, and then there’s how we organize, train and equip to build the organizations,” Brown said. “And we’re trying to do all those in parallel.”

He also offered updates on the Department of Defense’s progress in implementing the Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept.

The U.S. Army’s software factory has partnered with U.S. Army Europe and Africa Mission Command Support Branch to develop new applications intended to address challenges facing the U.S. military and its allies, DVIDS reported Monday.

During an interoperability exercise at 7th Army Training Command, ASF helped modernize an application developed to connect data between U.S. and NATO systems from the Army Tactical Assault Kit to enable a seamless exchange of information at the tactical edge.

“We’ve developed a path to production where apps go from origin to security scanning to deployment into Kubernetes clusters that will run on a TSI stack here on the edge of the battlefield,” said Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Millett, a platform engineer with ASF.

Martin Christian Dudel, a civilian senior software engineer with USAREUR-AF, said the software factory transformed the application into a “container that can operate in a cloud native environment on the tactical edge bridging U.S. and NATO systems.”

ASF was launched in April 2021 at the Austin Community College in Texas to develop new applications and train soldier coders to improve operations through technology.