Navy aircraft managers refine requirements in post-Iraq era

Sea Power,  Jun 2003  by Burgess, Richard R

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Northrop Grumman will focus on developing the technologies, systems, and processes needed to allow the UCAV to operate from an aircraft carrier: a strong airframe, shipboard integration, flight-deck operations, catapult takeoff and arrested landing, carrier airspace operations, command and control, and human interface. The company already has demonstrated the ability to land an F/A-18 Hornet using the Ship Relative Global Positioning System (SRGPS) with no manual control from the pilot, and expects to integrate the SRGPS in the UCAV-N.

One of the greatest challenges in basing UCAVs on carriers, Linn said, is flight-deck handling, including taxiing the UCAV safely on the carrier deck. Northrop Grumman is working with its Newport News Operations sector, and with fleet operators, to meet that challenge, and is considering the use of hand-held control devices. Linn said that the control software needed was easy to develop, but that establishing a reliable communications link between the UCAV and the controller has been much more difficult, mostly because of the intense HERO (hazard of electronic radiation to ordnance) environment of a carrier deck.

Northrop Grumman's UCAV-N is being designed to be launched not only by the steam catapults installed on the Navy's current aircraft carriers, but also by the electro-magnetic aircraft launching system (EMALS) scheduled for introduction on the next-generation carrier, CVN 21.

E-2C Advanced Hawkeye

Northrop Grumman expects the E-2C Advanced Hawkeye-formerly known as the E-2C Radar Modernization Program-to reach initial operational capability in 2011. The advanced E-2C is a multifaceted upgrade of the venerable E-2 that was first deployed on Navy carriers in 1965. The heart of the Advanced Hawkeye is its new ADS-18 electronically scanned array radar now under development by Lockheed Martin.

The UHF ADS-18 is designed to conform to the shape of the current dish-shaped radome mounted on top of current E-2Cs. That design decision, company officials said, will preclude the need for a time-consuming new flight-certification process.

Lockheed Martin's AHE radar team has been awarded a $23 million contract for the Weapon System Functional Review, scheduled for November 2003, for the new radar. Lockheed Martin has overall responsibility for development of the ADS-18, its Advanced Detection Data Processor, and its space-time processing. Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems is developing the radar's solid-state transmitter; Raytheon is developing the system's digital receiver.

A Navy NC-130H-equipped with a prototype ADS-18 radome-is being flown by Air Test & Evaluation Squadron 20 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., as a test platform in the development of the new radar. As of mid-April, Lockheed Martin had completed the ground testing of the Advanced Hawkeye radar as well as 11 successful test flights of the Advanced Hawkeye radar data-collection system installed on the NC-130H.

The Advanced Hawkeye configuration-an upgrade of the Hawkeye 2000 configuration currently in production-also includes such improvements as an improved IFF (identification friend or foe) system; an upgraded mission computer; upgraded navigation systems; tactical displays in the cockpit; improved communications-including the ARC-210 anti-jam radio and a new intercommunications system; an upgraded center fuselage and new engine-driven generators; and new engine gearboxes.