31 July 2025
Release # 25-07
Contact: Brandon Pollachek Brandon.j.pollachek.civ@army.mil
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MD – The U.S. Army’s Project Management Office, Aircraft Survivability Equipment (PMO ASE) and Army Contract Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground recently approved Northrop Grumman to continue into Phase II of an Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) for the Improved Threat Detection System (ITDS) missile warning solution.
The ITDS is Army Aviation’s future threat warning system that protects Army aircraft in the full range of military operations. The system offers superior aircraft protection against Air Defense threat systems and a multi-functional sensor and open systems architecture for advanced situational awareness and data enabled formations through Next Generation Command and Control data layer integration. ITDS will detect, classify, declare, and cue Class I – IV Unmanned Aerial Systems/drones, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, Rocket Propelled Grenades, Surface to Air Missiles, Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, Air to Air missiles, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, laser guided weapons, and small arms. The ITDS is intended to field to the enduring and future Army Rotary fleet with priority given to the MV-75 FLRAA and AH-64 Apache.
The ITDS Phase II scope of effort for this OTA will focus on initial delivery of ITDS prototypes. This effort focuses on design, demonstration testing, architecture concepts, prototype application hosting, Missile Warning sensor characterization, performance in flight testing, and aircraft operational demonstration and integration.
The Phase I OTA focused on technology demonstration and maturation where the Army conducted extensive flight and live fire testing which ended in May 2025 with over 51 hours of actual flight time. Live fire testing included replications of tactics used in current combat operations.
The ITDS’s Abbreviated Capability Development Document (A-CDD) was approved in July, and the program is postured to fully execute FY26 RDT&E dollars under an existing contract and transition to the Middle Tier of Acquisition Rapid Prototyping pathway in 1QFY26. The A-CDD outlines a requirement for 10 prototypes to support test and integration activities and 100 fieldable systems.
“This critical capability is required for Army Aviation to maintain overmatch against near peer threats and enables advanced tactics through increased detection range, improved detection in clutter, and threat agnostic algorithms to rapidly respond to emerging threats and allow the execution of full spectrum multi-domain operations,” said Col. Brock Zimmerman, PM ASE.
ITDS will be a Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) conformant and Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA)-compliant system, with the ability to operate on the Army’s enduring and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft.