BAE wins contract to fire up precision-guided munitions for US

British multinational defence, security, and aerospace giant BAE Systems has been awarded a $13.1m contract to demonstrate a new, cost-effective optical 'seeker' for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) precision-guided munitions.

Designed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory, BAE's seeker is designed to improve navigation, as well as automate target location and homing, for different types of munitions used in GPS-denied and other contested environments.

BAE, which supplies its 'precision kill' laser-seeker rockets to the US and other armies, previously tested the optical seeker during the first phase of DARPA's Seeker Cost Transformation (SECTR) program, integrating the device with a wide range of weapon platforms that use munitions in day or night.

The seeker enables autonomous precision guidance via passive electro-optical and infrared sensors in environments where GPS navigation is unavailable or unreliable.

"Low-cost, precision munitions are critical to our customers, which is why we've developed a flexible seeker that radically lowers the cost typically associated with precision guidance," said Mark Meisner, a chief scientist at BAE Systems.

"The SECTR program is allowing us to deliver advanced sensing and navigation capabilities for munitions to warfighters faster," he added.

The new seeker's open architecture enables highly accurate, competitive, low-cost munitions to be capable of navigating and locating targets in limited-access and denied environments and provides these munitions with quick-reaction capabilities while meeting stringent cost, size, weight, and power requirements with an open architecture that enables rapid seeker integration into current and new weapon systems.

The program will conclude in July 2019 with multiple test firings on several precision-guided munition platforms.

As of 1340 BST, BAE shares had dipped 0.46% to 610.60p.