By Marina Malenic
Northrop Grumman [NOC] recently completed the JT8D propulsion pod’s bleed air system’s preliminary design review for the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), the company said yesterday.
The bleed air system extracts high-pressured hot air generated from the JT8D’s engines and converts it into cool air. The cool air pressurizes the Air Cycle Machines and cools the aircraft’s environmental control system, cabin and mission equipment.
This design effort has been a major focus of the re-engining development program, according to Steve Pauly, Northrop Grumman program director for JSTARS development.
“The newly designed bleed air system will be installed and flight tested towards the middle of next year,” said Pauly. “This is a major step toward clearing the way for full production and installation of the new JT8D propulsion pod system.”
The 17-aircraft JSTARS fleet provides long-range wide area surveillance for the military. It is flown by the 116th Air Control Wing based at Warner Robins AFB, Ga.
The Air Force has already spent $22 billion to develop and sustain the E-8 fleet, according to budget documents. A new engine is the most pressing JSTARS upgrade, should the Air Force choose to keep the current fleet flying. The 40-year-old engines are causing massive maintenance bills and preventing optimum mission performance.
An ongoing analysis of alternatives for ground-moving-target-indicator solutions will help determine if more than four JSTARs will be re-engined, or if different aircraft could address all or part of the need, Air Force officials have said. The service is debating where future investments should be made for such target-tracking aircraft (Defense Daily, March 9, 2010).
To date, Congress has supported only incremental funding for new engines. Two ship sets of JT8D replacement engines are currently on order, and an additional two are in the pending defense budget. Four sets are programmed for 2013 and five each in 2014 and 2015. Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies [UTX], builds the replacement engines.
Boeing [BA] is pitching the Air Force a new version of the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane to take the place of the aging E-8 fleet. Company officials said last month that a new fleet of 17 weaponized, 737-based aerial ground surveillance (AGS) planes with a next-generation radar would cost the Pentagon $5.5 billion (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).
However, Dave Nagy, a Northrop Grumman vice president who leads the JSTARS effort, said yesterday that a one-to-one replacement of JSTARS with a P-8-based aircraft would likely be inadequate.
“The proposition that you can duplicate what JSTARS does with a smaller, two-engine aircraft…is from my perspective a bit of a stretch,” he told Defense Daily in a telephone interview. “Conservatively, it is more like a two-to-one replacement to keep the same level of capability.”
Further, Nagy contended that the current JSTARS platform can readily host any new radar or sensor “the Air Force deems necessary.”
And aside from the re-engining effort, Nagy said the 707-based aircraft would be good “for 50-plus more years.” He said the major investments in upgrades “have already been made.”
Since 2001, crews have flown over 63,000 hours in 5,200 combat missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to the Air Force.
“From operational value perspective, there’s value here,” said Nagy. “You can’t argue that.”