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From Aviation Week:
SINGAPORE—The U.S. Navy hopes to further validate the Lockheed Martin F-35’s performance as an airborne sensor for air and missile defense in an upcoming Aegis sea trial.
Sometime between June and August, the Navy will attempt to use tracking data from an F-35 to shoot down an air-breathing target drone with a Raytheon Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptor fired from an Aegis ship in the Pacific Ocean.
Steve Over, Lockheed’s director of F-35 international business development, says the at-sea demonstration will be a follow-on to a September 2016 test involving a Marine Corps F-35B and the USS Desert Ship at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. In that trial, targeting data from the F-35B was used to successfully intercept an MQM-107 Streaker target drone with an SM-6.
At the time, the government wanted to preserve the MQM-107 for reuse, but the test proved to be so successful that the radar-guided SM-6 destroyed it on impact. The SM-6’s fuse had been replaced with a telemetry kit to measure its final proximity to the target rather than explode, but it struck the MQM-107 target anyway.
“The Navy got very excited when we did this successful test that they’re planning the next test now,” Over said during an interview at the Singapore Airshow here Feb. 4. “They plan to do a live-fire exercise out in the Pacific this summer [Northern Hemisphere].”
The key to these tests is enabling the Aegis Combat System to receive information from the Joint Strike Fighter’s Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL). This data link has a low probability of detection by passing information through a narrow, directional beam that is extremely difficult to intercept.
Over says last November the Navy outfitted one of its San Diego-based Aegis destroyers with a MADL receiver in preparation for the upcoming test. With this modification, the ship can receive targeting information directly from the F-35.
The purpose of this at-sea demonstration is to show how the F-35’s advanced Northrop Grumman-built infrared distributed aperture system (DAS); active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar; and fusion algorithms can support air and missile defense as part of a networked “kill web” architecture.
The F-35’s six-camera electro-optical/infrared Northrop AAQ-37 DAS enables the pilot to look through the skin of the aircraft and see incoming air and missile threats at great distances. DAS’s full capability became apparent in 2010 when an F-35 flying near Washington, D.C., detected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral almost 800 nm (1,482 km) away.
Two networked DAS systems can be linked together to generate a three-dimensional target track, or it can simply cue the F-35’s Northrop APG-81 AESA fire control radar, if within range, to get an even better track.
This targeting information can then be passed via MADL to any “shooter” capable of intercepting the target through kinetic or electromagnetic means. This could include the U.S.’s Aegis, Patriot or Thaad missile systems.
Flying at 30,000 ft., the F-35 can see farther than any land- or sea-based sensors. In the September 2016 test, the MQM-107 was replicating a subsonic cruise missile flying low behind a mountain range and it could not have been seen without the F-35B.
“Aegis didn’t even have its radar turned on,” Over notes. “It couldn’t have even seen the target drone because of the mountain range.”
Over says the F-35B provided an initial target location as well as midcourse guidance updates to the SM-6. He says SM-6 is an “enormous missile” that could not possibly be carried by a typical fighter aircraft, so linking F-35 and Aegis allows the F-35 to kill a wider variety of targets without even firing a single shot.
“This is a logical evolution of the capability of the airplane,” Over says. “It just requires software and the right communications link.”
John Montgomery, Northrop’s fifth-generation improvements and derivatives program manager, says the distributed aperture system ensures that no airborne missile can sneak up on the F-35. Northrop has been exploring ways to employ DAS for air and missile defense for several years. This capability was successfully demonstrated during a test designated FTX-20 on Oct. 16, 2014.
During that trial in Hawaii, a ground-based DAS and one carried aboard a Gulfstream testbed aircraft were able to establish a three-dimensional target track of a medium-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
“This weapon system is going to evolve to do things legacy fighter airplanes could have never even thought about,” Over says.
SINGAPORE—The U.S. Navy hopes to further validate the Lockheed Martin F-35’s performance as an airborne sensor for air and missile defense in an upcoming Aegis sea trial.
Sometime between June and August, the Navy will attempt to use tracking data from an F-35 to shoot down an air-breathing target drone with a Raytheon Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptor fired from an Aegis ship in the Pacific Ocean.
Steve Over, Lockheed’s director of F-35 international business development, says the at-sea demonstration will be a follow-on to a September 2016 test involving a Marine Corps F-35B and the USS Desert Ship at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. In that trial, targeting data from the F-35B was used to successfully intercept an MQM-107 Streaker target drone with an SM-6.
At the time, the government wanted to preserve the MQM-107 for reuse, but the test proved to be so successful that the radar-guided SM-6 destroyed it on impact. The SM-6’s fuse had been replaced with a telemetry kit to measure its final proximity to the target rather than explode, but it struck the MQM-107 target anyway.
“The Navy got very excited when we did this successful test that they’re planning the next test now,” Over said during an interview at the Singapore Airshow here Feb. 4. “They plan to do a live-fire exercise out in the Pacific this summer [Northern Hemisphere].”
The key to these tests is enabling the Aegis Combat System to receive information from the Joint Strike Fighter’s Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL). This data link has a low probability of detection by passing information through a narrow, directional beam that is extremely difficult to intercept.
Over says last November the Navy outfitted one of its San Diego-based Aegis destroyers with a MADL receiver in preparation for the upcoming test. With this modification, the ship can receive targeting information directly from the F-35.
The purpose of this at-sea demonstration is to show how the F-35’s advanced Northrop Grumman-built infrared distributed aperture system (DAS); active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar; and fusion algorithms can support air and missile defense as part of a networked “kill web” architecture.
The F-35’s six-camera electro-optical/infrared Northrop AAQ-37 DAS enables the pilot to look through the skin of the aircraft and see incoming air and missile threats at great distances. DAS’s full capability became apparent in 2010 when an F-35 flying near Washington, D.C., detected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral almost 800 nm (1,482 km) away.
Two networked DAS systems can be linked together to generate a three-dimensional target track, or it can simply cue the F-35’s Northrop APG-81 AESA fire control radar, if within range, to get an even better track.
This targeting information can then be passed via MADL to any “shooter” capable of intercepting the target through kinetic or electromagnetic means. This could include the U.S.’s Aegis, Patriot or Thaad missile systems.
Flying at 30,000 ft., the F-35 can see farther than any land- or sea-based sensors. In the September 2016 test, the MQM-107 was replicating a subsonic cruise missile flying low behind a mountain range and it could not have been seen without the F-35B.
“Aegis didn’t even have its radar turned on,” Over notes. “It couldn’t have even seen the target drone because of the mountain range.”
Over says the F-35B provided an initial target location as well as midcourse guidance updates to the SM-6. He says SM-6 is an “enormous missile” that could not possibly be carried by a typical fighter aircraft, so linking F-35 and Aegis allows the F-35 to kill a wider variety of targets without even firing a single shot.
“This is a logical evolution of the capability of the airplane,” Over says. “It just requires software and the right communications link.”
John Montgomery, Northrop’s fifth-generation improvements and derivatives program manager, says the distributed aperture system ensures that no airborne missile can sneak up on the F-35. Northrop has been exploring ways to employ DAS for air and missile defense for several years. This capability was successfully demonstrated during a test designated FTX-20 on Oct. 16, 2014.
During that trial in Hawaii, a ground-based DAS and one carried aboard a Gulfstream testbed aircraft were able to establish a three-dimensional target track of a medium-range, surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
“This weapon system is going to evolve to do things legacy fighter airplanes could have never even thought about,” Over says.
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