Northrop Grumman [NOC] through its new multi-node Rotorcraft Avionics Innovation Lab (RAIL) has shown that an integrated aircraft survivability equipment (ASE) suite is possible using systems found aboard legacy analog aircraft, company executives recently said.
“We have gone out there and proven that you can create an integrated ASE capability…in the very, very near future, and not some protracted acquisition that tries to figure out ‘how do I get that information into total battle space awareness,'” Jeff Palombo Electronics Systems sector vice president and general manager at Northrop Grumman, told reporters at the Association of the Unites States Army Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
The suite controller at RAIL was the company’s APR-39, a radar warning receiver that the lab could manipulate in terms of software to talk with other systems. Besides having access to the APR-39’s source code, the large install base of the system made it an attractive choice for the Northrop Grumman’s new-old ASE centerpiece. “Virtually every helicopter flying has an APR-39,” Palombo said.
The ASE demonstration is another example of the company’s recent push toward advancing systems through software packages instead of looking to change hardware, an approach also followed on Northrop Grumman’s TPS-80 G/ATOR, the first multi-mission, air/task radar for the Pentagon (Defense Daily, April 8).
“An important thing with rotary-wing aircraft, is don’t add new hardware to the airplane, don’t add weight, and don’t make me change an A-kit–I can’t afford the time and the dollars to do that,” Palombo said of his customers’ disposition.
The APR-39 ASE suite showed it could collect information from laser warning and missile warning systems, provide it to a mission computer or glass cockpit, and send it off board through a blue force tracker, or “any other kind of link,” Palombo said,
“The key thing is that this is not Northrop Grumman equipment, this is hardware that is flying on airplanes today, Palombo said. “It could be BAE’s CMWS [Common Missile Warning System], Goodrich’s laser threat warning system, Symetrics’ flare and chaff dispensers, or a multitude of other systems.”
Northrop Grumman Monday said it was awarded a contract potentially worth $457 million to provide the Army’s Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) with APR-39 radar warning receivers.
Under the terms of the sole-source, five-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract, the company will deliver APR-39C(V)1 upgrade kits and APR-39A/B(V)2 systems as part of a $118 million initial order.
The APR-39 is designed to provide continuous 360-degree coverage to automatically detect and identify threat types, bearing and lethality before alerting a cockpit crew to each threat with a graphical symbol on the cockpit multifunction display or video display.
“For the past two decades, Northrop Grumman’s APR-39 has been the primary radar warning receiver and electronic warfare management system for the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force rotary wing aircraft,” Mark Kula, vice president of Radio Frequency Combat and Information Systems at Northrop Grumman’s Land and Self Protection Systems Division, said. “The APR-39 is specially designed to maximize survivability by improving aircrew situational awareness.”
To date, over 6,000 APR-39 systems have been installed on both domestic and international AH-1W/Z, UH-1N/Y, MV-22B, KC-130T, UH-60, OH-58D, CH-53, CH-46, AH-64A/D and CH-47 aircraft.
The recent work done with APR-39 at RAIL, the multi-location, real and virtual lab designed to allow sharing of technology and integration of sensor products and capabilities, has capped off about three years of work and investment toward a legacy system ASE solution by the company, Palombo said.
“We have proven that we can cross cue off the helicopter, and have done that in actual demonstrations [where] we cross cued to a targeting pod…to a radar system, and to a laser designation system [the location of] where the threat was coming from,” he said. “The integration control units need to be able to support what is in the airplane today and what’s best in breed, with digital interoperability to provide the pilot with unambiguous threat information, and how to get that data off the plane to reduce the time of the kill chain,” he added.