BAE Systems has been awarded $137 million in US Army Foreign Military Sales (FMS) contracts to provide its AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning System (CMWS) to allied air forces. The CMWS is designed to detect infrared- and radio frequency-guided missile threats that can strike aircraft with minimal warning. Once a threat is identified, the system automatically alerts the crew and cues countermeasures such as flares, chaff, RF decoys, or directed infrared countermeasure (DIRCM) systems. Currently integrated on more than 40 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft platforms—including the AH-64 Apache—over 3,000 CMWS units have been installed globally, accumulating more than four million operational flight hours. Manufactured across BAE facilities in Alabama, Texas, and New Hampshire, the contract builds upon a previous $114 million FMS award in 2024. Beyond missile detection, CMWS can identify hostile fire such as small-arms rounds and rocket-propelled grenades, while its open software architecture allows updates to counter emerging threats.
