F-35 Lightning II News

June 9, 2009 (by Lieven Dewitte) - Northrop Grumman Corporation has delivered the initial flight-ready integrated communications, navigation and identification (CNI) system for the F-35 joint strike fighter program.
The system has successfully completed safety of flight tests and obtained approval for flying this summer onboard the first mission systems equipped F-35 aircraft.

When fully developed, Northrop Grumman's integrated CNI system will provide the capability equivalent of more than 40 avionics subsystem functions to F-35 pilots.

By using its industry-leading software-defined radio technology, Northrop Grumman's design enables simultaneous support for dozens of critical functions while greatly reducing size and weight on the advanced fighter. These functions include Identification Friend or Foe (IFF), automatic acquisition of fly-to points and various voice and data communications such as the Multifunction Advanced Data Link that was approved by the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Requirements Oversight Council for use on all low-observable platforms.

"This will be the first of many integrated CNI avionics systems that will fly on F-35 aircraft," said Roger Fujii, vice president of Network Communication Systems for Northrop Grumman's Information Systems sector. "We have been pleased with our system's performance on the CATBird (Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter Cooperative Avionics Test Bed), and those flight tests give us high confidence in the next-generation communications capabilities we continue to bring to the warfighter."

The integrated CNI system that was delivered to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics has nearly 500,000 lines of software and incorporates the Joint Tactical Radio System software architecture. Delivered capabilities include Ultra High Frequency/Very High Frequency receive and transmit, IFF transponder, radar altimeter, tactical air navigation (TACAN) and system hardware and software diagnostics.