The Air Force’s EW Quarterbacks
To implement an EMS strategy, the Air Force needs hardware. It gave up its dedicated electronic warfare aircraft, the EF-111 Raven and F-4G, in the late 1990s. Their functions have since been taken over by the F-16 Block 50 Wild Weasel, the EC-130 Compass Call, and a number of other tactical platforms, pods, and systems integrated with aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35.For the latter half of the 2020s, the Air Force’s tactical EW game will largely be handled by the F-35 Block 4, with its AN/ASQ-239 EW system, and the F-15, fitted with the AN/ALQ-250 Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS). The EPAWSS is actually based on the F-35’s suite, and BAE Systems, which makes both, expects that it will be able to produce modules common to both systems by mid-decade, sharply reducing sustainment costs while maximizing the efforts of software. The Air Force and Boeing are deciding whether to pursue that approach. Neither the Air Force nor BAE Systems can talk much about how, specifically, the EPAWSS works. Traditionally, such systems have either jammed enemy radars with so much energy that they can’t see targets in the cloud of electrons; or they send an inverse wave to fool the enemy radar that it isn’t there; or it manipulates the return signal to fool the enemy radar into thinking the jet is somewhere else.
Broadly, it’s an internal system—not a pod—that rapidly senses and collects “hits” of electromagnetic energy, even from low probability of intercept radars, creating a wraparound view of threats for the pilot. EPAWSS is integrated with the F-15’s chaff and flare dispensers, and is “interoperable” with the F-15’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, BAE said, meaning it can jam enemy radar without interfering with the jet’s own radar or radar warning receivers.
The EPAWSS has a modular, open-system architecture so that even small businesses with “neat tricks” will be able to get onto the platform, said Jerry Wohletz, BAE Systems vice president and general manager for electronic warfare. And while he couldn’t say how fast the EPAWSS can detect a threat and respond, it’s “the fastest system that has ever been deployed.”
“We’re using fundamental math and physics,” Wohletz said. “We’re not going after artificial intelligence or machine learning,” but “raw, brute force overmatch against what the adversaries can field in speed.” He said that provides an advantage in decision-making: “if you’re faster than your adversary, you own your adversary.”
The system will provide “freedom of maneuver” for the non-stealthy, 1970s-vintage F-15 near highly contested airspace, Wohletz said. The F-15 will be able to get “within meaningful ranges” of enemy air defenses with a large load of weaponry, “so they can use all of that armament … at a very extended combat range.” Without EPAWSS, the Air Force has said the F-15 would be unusable near contested airspace after about 2025.
Rather than rely on a library of set piece responses, the EPAWSS can deliver a “cocktail of approaches” that will challenge an adversary’s ability to process the data on a useful timeline.
By building on the F-35’s system, the EPAWSS and F-35 will both be able to take advantage of software and update investments, Wohletz said.
“Now EPAWSS is feeding back into [F-35] Block 4 upgrades,” he said, “and we’re going to take that to the next level, and drive more commonality into the system, toward the ideal situation of some day, getting to … where the modules start to be interchangeable between aircraft.” That’s key, because “you hear from DOD leaders, ‘sustainment is killing us,’” he said. Common modules would ease maintenance by making more line replaceable units available and reduce cost by producing them in greater quantities.
Major software updates will likely be made in six-to-12 month intervals, Wohletz said, but in development, there have been as many as five a year, indicating that faster updates are possible if necessary.
EPAWSS suffered from serious setback early in development, but BAE Systems put “a lot of skin in the game,” and those issues are largely resolved, Wohletz said. The Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, in its 2022 annual report, said the Air Force is testing EPAWSS now and will start fielding it operationally on F-15Es in fiscal 2023, and on the new F-15EX in fiscal 2024.
12 Feb 2022, 04:49
(Often on the WEB it is written that ASQ-239 alone is only capable of ESM and not ECM jamming. The common theory is that "only jamming is the APG-81 nose radar.")
