BAE Systems has been chosen to fulfil a US Department of War requirement for a Joint Urgent Operational Need (JUON) Dual Mode Air to Air is a Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) weapon system “using Long Wave Infrared seeker, mid-body warhead with dual safe proximity fuze, and modified guidance sections to build prototype all up rounds,” according to a post on the sam.gov website. “Dual Mode Air to Air will be deployed from a wide variety of platforms, including helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft providing a flexible and adaptable solution for different operational scenarios,” said the post.
“The goal of Dual-Mode is to heavily leverage the success of the AGR-20F FALCO UON as a cost-effective cUAS solution with reduced lase time enabling faster rate of fire. Building upon APKWS, BAE’s existing architecture allows the component delivery schedule to meet urgent operational needs, ensuring expedited testing and integration on the F-16 platform and rapid fielding of the Air-to-Air capability. The contractor’s Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) 7 will ensure production representative processes to support build and delivery of these components. Build and delivery of sub-components for test hardware enables completion of qualification, test and integration to ensure airworthiness and safety requirements are met. These production representative processes must be further refined following the 24-month initial partial solution in order to achieve a full solution to the JUON problem set….The total cost of this acquisition is estimated to be $145M: $62M for the development of components, $56M for the testing and qualifications of the operational leave behinds, $27M to cover technical risk and USN qualification efforts.
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