BAE Systems has been awarded $137 million in US Army foreign military sales contracts to deliver AN/AAR-57 Common Missile Warning Systems (CMWS) to allied air forces.
The system is engineered to detect and classify infrared- and radio-frequency–guided missile threats, providing near-instantaneous alerts and automated countermeasure cues to protect aircraft from rapidly emerging threats. This capability plays a critical role in enhancing aircraft survivability in contested environments.
Under the contracts, CMWS will be supplied to aircraft fleets operated by more than 20 partner nations. The system is already integrated across more than 40 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft platforms globally, including widely used assets such as the AH-64 Apache.
More than 3,000 CMWS units are currently in service worldwide, with operational usage exceeding four million flight hours. Design and manufacturing activities are distributed across BAE Systems facilities in Alabama, Texas, and New Hampshire.
The new awards build on a previous 2024 contract in which BAE Systems secured $114 million in US Army foreign military sales funding for CMWS procurement.
CMWS Operational Role
As the US Army’s standard missile warning solution, CMWS is compatible with a wide range of countermeasure systems, including chaff, flares, radio-frequency decoys, and directed infrared countermeasures. It also operates as the core processing node within integrated aircraft survivability architectures, coordinating threat detection and defensive responses across multiple subsystems.
In addition to missile warning, CMWS provides hostile fire detection, including small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade threats, and supports mission data recording for post-flight analysis. Its adaptable software framework allows threat libraries and detection algorithms to be continuously updated, enabling the system to remain effective against evolving and emerging threats.
