Contract Secured for Threat Detection Processing & Airborne Sensor Integration

Northrop Grumman has awarded Curtiss-Wright an approximately $14 million contract to supply sensor processing equipment supporting Phase II development of the U.S. Army’s Improved Threat Detection System (ITDS).

The ITDS program aims to deliver advanced missile warning and threat detection capabilities across current and future U.S. Army aviation platforms, including the AH-64 Apache and the MV-75 Cheyenne Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft. Designed to protect aircraft from air defense systems, the future threat warning system pairs Curtiss-Wright’s integrated processor with Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Tactical Hostile Engagement Awareness (ATHENA) sensor to enable timely missile warnings and critical information flow across platforms to protect aircraft and aircrews.

Curtiss-Wright’s ITDS integrated processor provides a modular, ruggedized solution engineered to ingest high-bandwidth sensor data, perform real-time processing and data fusion, and enable rapid integration of new capabilities. Built with an open systems architecture purpose-built for portability from platform to platform, the integrated processor utilizes MOSA-aligned, SOSA-compatible modules integrated within a conduction-cooled chassis designed for airborne deployment.

“Combining Curtiss-Wright’s highly durable processing capability with Northrop Grumman’s ATHENA sensor will result in an unrivaled threat detection capability, providing the potential to protect aircrews from virtually any weapon system – air to air or surface to air – employed by our adversaries,” said Brian Perry, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions. “Our integrated processor excels at rapidly processing and transporting large amounts of data in the most demanding environments, making it the optimal computing solution for latency-critical sense and response protection systems such as ITDS.”

To support integration across a wide range of aircraft protection architectures, the system features high-speed optical interfaces and configurable I/O compatible with both modern digital sensors and legacy aircraft interfaces. Additionally, the unit delivers an artificial intelligence-enabled compute architecture and real-time net-centric data sharing, ensuring the platform can evolve alongside emerging sensor technologies, algorithms, and countermeasure systems.