Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman Corp. this month plans to begin operational testing and evaluation of its Guardian anti-missile protection system aboard an MD-11 airliner, followed by more tests aboard a Boeing 747 later this year, the company said Aug. 22.
The planned tests came after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security approved the design of Guardian, intended to protect commercial aircraft from attack by man-portable air defense systems, known as MANPADS.
Guardian, based on military Directional Infrared Countermeasures, or DIRCM, passed three critical design reviews. The first involved hardware development, the second focused on software and the third — completed in April — called for installing the system on an aircraft.
Northrop Grumman's DIRCM system operates automatically by detecting a missile launch, determining if it is a threat and activating a high-intensity infrared countermeasure to defeat the threat. The only similar system in production, Nemesis AN/AAQ-24(V), is being installed on several hundred aircraft for militaries of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Denmark.
