ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Feb. 7, 2012. The U.S. Army has awarded Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) a $31.4 million contract for the Common Infrared Countermeasure (CIRCM) Technical Demonstration (TD) program to develop the next generation of aircraft survivability equipment to defend helicopters against man-portable air-defense systems and other heat-seeking munitions.

CIRCM is a laser-based countermeasure system designed to work with missile warning systems for rotary-wing, tilt-rotor and small, fixed-wing aircraft across the military services.

Under the terms of the program, Northrop Grumman and its industry partners, SELEX Galileo and Daylight Solutions, will deliver eight sets of test hardware in addition to three full ship sets for the Army's 21-month research, development, test and evaluation program that will include reliability testing, missile jamming tests and flight tests on an Army platform.