Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Found this on this Air Force Magazine Daily Report(3/26/10)

Responsiveness: In response to current threat assessments, USAF is accelerating portions of its Increment 3.2 upgrade program for the F-22 fleet, senior service officials said Wednesday. "Increment 3.2 Accelerated" will be software-only enhancements that provide "significant additional electronic protection, Link 16 improvements, and a better combat identification capability," wrote David Van Buren, USAF's acting acquisition czar, and Lt. Gen. Phillip Breedlove, Air Staff point man for air, space, and information operations, plans, and requirements, in written testimony to the House Armed Services airland panel. Development of these new features should be completed in Fiscal 2013. At a later point, F-22s will receive the full Increment 3.2 upgrade, which includes even greater connectivity and self-protection as well as targeting improvements and the ability to employ the AIM-120D and AIM-9X air-to-air missiles. This increment will follow the Increment 3.1 modifications that the service intends to start fielding next fiscal year. (Van Buren-Breedlove prepared remarks

Does anyone have a clue what they are referring here as "significant additional electronic protection"? At first, I thought they were talking about the EA capability of the APG-77 AESA, but apparently, that upgrade has already been scheduled for Increment 3.1 that is going to be fielded in Fiscal year 2011. Could that be an upgrade of the ALR-94 to give it a more advanced surveillance capability?

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Sounds to me like they're trying to proof it against AESA sets with EA capability.
(I may be wildly wrong, infact I probably am as is so often the case!)

I'm more interested in the 'targeting improvements' part. Could that include AIRST, or cheek arrays? I was under the impression those would possibly be part of an even later, increment 3.3? But perhaps one or the other in the 2016 ballpark... along with AIM-120D/9x integration, a potential 3-4 yr capability-gap, imo, for which many will likely remain critical.

Sorry, but the FY2011 F-22 RDT&E doc does not talk about 3.2 much.

Maybe it is referring to moving target capability for the radar?

shep1978 wrote:

Sounds to me like they're trying to proof it against AESA sets with EA capability.
(I may be wildly wrong, infact I probably am as is so often the case!)

Your interpretation seems logical. Electronic protection, in this context, seems to indicate the opposite of EA-ie., a measure to protect your radar against your enemy's EA/ECM. Sort of like ECCM if you will.... Anybody else has any other thoughts?

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Increment 3.2-electronic protection