Northrop Grumman [NOC] and the Army are another step closer to providing warfighters advanced signals intelligence (SIGINT) this year with the successful completion of electromagnetic interference/electromagnetic compatibility (EMI/EMC) testing on the first RC-12X Guardrail aircraft, officials said.
The RC-12X Guardrail is the Army airborne SIGINT sensor and ground processing system that provides signals collection, identification and precision geo-location to enable the Brigade Combat Team’s Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze and Disseminate (F3EAD) battle command process.
“This test is a major milestone both for the Army and for Northrop Grumman as we work toward fielding the improved system in 2010,” said Trip Carter, director for Northrop Grumman’s Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (AISR) initiatives.
This is the latest modernization of the Guardrail system that has been around for more than 35 years, he said.
“We are upgrading the signals intelligence payload on the Guardrail aircraft, to address modern signal threats and really to take advantage of the signals product line that we’ve developed here at Northrop Grumman,” Carter told sister publication Defense Daily. “What we’re fielding here is going to be a state-of-the-art really an unparalleled SIGINT capability in theater.”
The RC-12X Guardrail Modernization program that Northrop Grumman has been working on since 2007 introduces new payloads to the system with enhanced capabilities to sense and exploit emerging and rapidly evolving irregular and conventional warfare threats. The program also improves the sustainability of the RC-12X through commonality and significant hardware and software improvements.
The EMI/EMC testing validates operation of the aircraft’s electronic systems in a large, electromagnetically shielded chamber. Various combinations of the avionics and sensor payload equipment are operated independently and simultaneously to identify potential sources of interference or compatibility issues that can affect operations. EMI/EMC testing is among the requirements to receive an airworthiness certificate.
“We’ve changed the external configuration of the aircraft enough that the plane has to be flown with experimental test pilots to determine how it does handle in the air,” Clark Lewis, program manager for Northrop Grumman, Defense Daily.
The air-handling tests began in December and were completed last week. Now the Army will write up test reports and make a recommendation for certification. “We expect that process will be completed by the end of this month,” he said.
Experimental pilots will fly the aircraft, which has been tested in Alabama, to Sacramento, Calif., where it will join another and undertake testing of the sensor payloads. There will be some shakedown flights with experimental pilots before the airworthiness certificate, and then tests of the sensors will begin in February.
“We’re looking to complete our contractor tests by the end of June,” Lewis said. Then the aircraft, payload and ground station go into user acceptance tests by an Army Aerial Exploitation Battalion. Those tests determine the actual deployment of the aircraft.
Subsystem tests are underway in Northrop Grumman’s Systems Integration Labs (SILs) in Sacramento, Calif. Ground testing of communications links and basic system functionality
Northrop Grumman began work on the Guardrail in 2007.
The Guardrail system is really several systems modified to varying degrees over the years, Carter said. “The program standardizes the SIGINT configuration on all 33 Guardrail airplanes that are being upgraded.
The program also takes advantage of Northrop Grumman’s Airborne Signals Intelligence Payload (ASIP) product line. It takes those developments the company is doing for the entire customer base and lets each customer take advantage of those. This benefits the Army now, he said, and in the future with new requirements, the company will be quickly able to adapt to those needs. The new system also addresses modern signals, where the threat is constantly changing as technology evolves, so “we have to keep up with that and in fact stay ahead of that curve.”
For the warfighter, the new system is expected to provide actionable intelligence “more quickly and more accurately” than before, Carter said.
Additionally, the SIGINT will be used to cross-cue to things like full motion video. What SIGINT does for full motion video is to pickup transmissions and then geo-locate that target based on the target, cross-cue to the full motion video and show it where to look–in real time.
The upgrade includes ground station processing, which is now “orders of magnitude” improved, Lewis said. Now soldiers will have the processing horsepower to put the collected data into context and actionable intelligence.