Will Electronic Attack be another role for JSF? 2 seats?
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Electronic Warfare Evolves Jan 25, 2010 By David A. Fulghum Washington
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... Electronic Warfare Evolves
"Attack, not defense, will reshape electronic warfare. A magazine filled with electron pulses, information scrambling data streams and invasive algorithms may arm the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ).
By 2018, variants of the U.S. Navy’s NGJ likely will be carried by a half-dozen manned and unmanned aircraft—perhaps more.
The service’s EP-X signals and communications intelligence aircraft—still without a final design or completed requirements—will be replacing the long-serving EP-3E.
“EP-X is going to be the eyes and ears that find the signals” that NGJ will jam and manipulate, says Christopher Carlson, director of U.S. business development for ITT’s integrated EW systems. “Precisely identifying and locating the signals is key to making [jamming] work.
The Navy’s EA-18G Growler is the lead platform for NGJ. Some variant of the Marine Corps F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) is expected to be the second. The Air Force’s F-35A may be third, although the technology could quickly shift into larger, faster unmanned aircraft designs.
“An electronic attack version of the F-35 has been planned since Day One by both the Marine Corps and the Air Force,” says a senior Air Force official. Lockheed Martin officials say there is no plan to use a power-pulloff shaft from the main engine to provide auxiliary power to an electronic attack system. However, “there are solutions to the electrical power challenge,” the Air Force official says, that do not involve ram-air turbines.
From the Navy’s perspective, “it’s highly likely that the program will be incremental to plug up the [largest electronic attack shortcomings,” says a service official. “Advanced [surface-to-air missiles] with integrated networks need more complex waveforms. The capability the Navy wants is a low-power jamming solution to affect physical coherency in enemy [integrated air defense system] responses. The idea is to break down the networking, not to manipulate the network.”
The Navy’s priorities are to improve the existing ALQ-99 jammer pod’s capabilities, put the advanced NGJ capability on the EA-18G, add new capabilities to NGJ and integrate NGJ into the F-35As. “The Air Force needs a standoff capability, but the B-52 [concept] isn’t going anywhere,” says a senior aerospace industry official. But while the B-52 standoff jammer is dead, “the Air Force is watching NGJ very closely,” he says. “Some of their needs are not covered by its design. Their frequency coverage is slightly different, but the basic technology could be put on an Air Force platform whenever they decide what that will be.” That refers to the service’s operation of a large and growing, unmanned aircraft force.
“The Air Force recently released a request for information to come up with a limited capability by 2012,” says Jim Bailey, Raytheon’s NGJ capture director. “Raytheon’s Communications Electronic Attack with Surveillance and Reconnaissance pod is being used as the basis for that offering. They’ve asked for a pod. We have advanced receiver-exciter technology called the Advanced Receiver Integrated Exciter System that can form the basis of future airborne electronic attack capabilities. We also have trades going on to explore the most effective employment of modern, scalable, phased-array transmitter technology. But balancing structure, radar cross section and good [radio-frequency] performance is very difficult.”
Desired ranges for standoff jamming are classified, but there are hints that the Navy expects something around 200 mi. so that the curvature of the Earth will not create line-of-sight problems. That is less than the proposed B-52 standoff jammer concepts offered, but more than EA-6B Prowlers were able to provide the F-117 that was shot down in Serbia in 1999 [and later transferred to the Russian air defense industry]. The EA-6B community warned that their effective standoff jamming range was limited to about 80 mi. (based on pre-war experiments) for first-generation stealth aircraft, but this information was ignored by operational planners.
“In the ‘black world,’ there is ongoing work involving UAVs,” the industry official says. “Everybody acknowledges the fact that there’s not going to be a single EA platform. It will be a system of systems. The Air Force is already investing in MALD-J [Raytheon’s miniature air-launched decoy-jammer] and UAVs are natural for other parts of the [penetrating, close-range] mission.”
“There are realities and desires,” says Carlson. “The desire is that every F-35 could be turned into an EF-35. Most people who look at the problem say you will have to add extra-peripheral hardware that you won’t carry on every mission. You will probably add a very strange-looking pod because of the stealth requirements or a conformal pod with hardware in the weapons bay.”
New ideas are beginning to emerge.
“Within some constraints, the Air Force can assemble a best-of-breed solution,” the Air Force official says. “The real challenge will be the integration task, since that has never been a competency of the services.”
“It doesn’t look as hard as it did six months ago,” says Bailey. “If there is a RAT [ram-air turbine for generating electrical power], it will limit how we package the system [for the Growler]. The Navy wants NGJ pods for the EA-18G [which require] minimal interface changes. The F-35 can use the same scalable technology once it is repackaged for that platform requirement.”
One approach under consideration is to use the weapons bay and redesign the doors to include an aperture. But that space is more favored to carry larger electronic attack payloads.
However, the cannon bay is big enough for NGJ, and it has a frangible covering for the gun barrel that has been faired into the stealth design. Lockheed Martin has discussed repackaging NGJ for F-35 in what it calls a gun pod. The gun port blister on the left side of the aircraft’s nose would become the aperture."
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... Electronic Warfare Evolves
"Attack, not defense, will reshape electronic warfare. A magazine filled with electron pulses, information scrambling data streams and invasive algorithms may arm the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ).
By 2018, variants of the U.S. Navy’s NGJ likely will be carried by a half-dozen manned and unmanned aircraft—perhaps more.
The service’s EP-X signals and communications intelligence aircraft—still without a final design or completed requirements—will be replacing the long-serving EP-3E.
“EP-X is going to be the eyes and ears that find the signals” that NGJ will jam and manipulate, says Christopher Carlson, director of U.S. business development for ITT’s integrated EW systems. “Precisely identifying and locating the signals is key to making [jamming] work.
The Navy’s EA-18G Growler is the lead platform for NGJ. Some variant of the Marine Corps F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) is expected to be the second. The Air Force’s F-35A may be third, although the technology could quickly shift into larger, faster unmanned aircraft designs.
“An electronic attack version of the F-35 has been planned since Day One by both the Marine Corps and the Air Force,” says a senior Air Force official. Lockheed Martin officials say there is no plan to use a power-pulloff shaft from the main engine to provide auxiliary power to an electronic attack system. However, “there are solutions to the electrical power challenge,” the Air Force official says, that do not involve ram-air turbines.
From the Navy’s perspective, “it’s highly likely that the program will be incremental to plug up the [largest electronic attack shortcomings,” says a service official. “Advanced [surface-to-air missiles] with integrated networks need more complex waveforms. The capability the Navy wants is a low-power jamming solution to affect physical coherency in enemy [integrated air defense system] responses. The idea is to break down the networking, not to manipulate the network.”
The Navy’s priorities are to improve the existing ALQ-99 jammer pod’s capabilities, put the advanced NGJ capability on the EA-18G, add new capabilities to NGJ and integrate NGJ into the F-35As. “The Air Force needs a standoff capability, but the B-52 [concept] isn’t going anywhere,” says a senior aerospace industry official. But while the B-52 standoff jammer is dead, “the Air Force is watching NGJ very closely,” he says. “Some of their needs are not covered by its design. Their frequency coverage is slightly different, but the basic technology could be put on an Air Force platform whenever they decide what that will be.” That refers to the service’s operation of a large and growing, unmanned aircraft force.
“The Air Force recently released a request for information to come up with a limited capability by 2012,” says Jim Bailey, Raytheon’s NGJ capture director. “Raytheon’s Communications Electronic Attack with Surveillance and Reconnaissance pod is being used as the basis for that offering. They’ve asked for a pod. We have advanced receiver-exciter technology called the Advanced Receiver Integrated Exciter System that can form the basis of future airborne electronic attack capabilities. We also have trades going on to explore the most effective employment of modern, scalable, phased-array transmitter technology. But balancing structure, radar cross section and good [radio-frequency] performance is very difficult.”
Desired ranges for standoff jamming are classified, but there are hints that the Navy expects something around 200 mi. so that the curvature of the Earth will not create line-of-sight problems. That is less than the proposed B-52 standoff jammer concepts offered, but more than EA-6B Prowlers were able to provide the F-117 that was shot down in Serbia in 1999 [and later transferred to the Russian air defense industry]. The EA-6B community warned that their effective standoff jamming range was limited to about 80 mi. (based on pre-war experiments) for first-generation stealth aircraft, but this information was ignored by operational planners.
“In the ‘black world,’ there is ongoing work involving UAVs,” the industry official says. “Everybody acknowledges the fact that there’s not going to be a single EA platform. It will be a system of systems. The Air Force is already investing in MALD-J [Raytheon’s miniature air-launched decoy-jammer] and UAVs are natural for other parts of the [penetrating, close-range] mission.”
“There are realities and desires,” says Carlson. “The desire is that every F-35 could be turned into an EF-35. Most people who look at the problem say you will have to add extra-peripheral hardware that you won’t carry on every mission. You will probably add a very strange-looking pod because of the stealth requirements or a conformal pod with hardware in the weapons bay.”
New ideas are beginning to emerge.
“Within some constraints, the Air Force can assemble a best-of-breed solution,” the Air Force official says. “The real challenge will be the integration task, since that has never been a competency of the services.”
“It doesn’t look as hard as it did six months ago,” says Bailey. “If there is a RAT [ram-air turbine for generating electrical power], it will limit how we package the system [for the Growler]. The Navy wants NGJ pods for the EA-18G [which require] minimal interface changes. The F-35 can use the same scalable technology once it is repackaged for that platform requirement.”
One approach under consideration is to use the weapons bay and redesign the doors to include an aperture. But that space is more favored to carry larger electronic attack payloads.
However, the cannon bay is big enough for NGJ, and it has a frangible covering for the gun barrel that has been faired into the stealth design. Lockheed Martin has discussed repackaging NGJ for F-35 in what it calls a gun pod. The gun port blister on the left side of the aircraft’s nose would become the aperture."
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