Jane Edwards
Lockheed Martin has teamed up with Northrop Grumman to complete initial integration work on a soft-kill demonstrator platform for the U.S. Army’s Modular Active Protection System.
Lockheed said Tuesday it combined its Open Architecture Processor with Northrop’s Multifunction Electro-Optic System countermeasure equipment and Passive Infrared Cueing Sensor to develop an open-architecture soft-kill platform for MAPS.
Both companies performed the integration work under contracts the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center awarded in 2015 and in support of system demonstrations on an M1 Abrams battle tank this year.
A soft-kill demonstrator works to help active protection tools counter threats by confusing hostile sensor-based weapons platforms through interference, spoofing or obscuration.
Lockheed designed the Open Architecture Processor to process and control data from several countermeasure systems and sensors, while Northrop’s sensors and countermeasure tools are designed for use with active protection systems on ground vehicles.
