NAVY * AIRCRAFT

Sea Power,  Jan 2004  

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One EP-3E was disassembled on Hainan Island, China, and returned to the United States after it made an emergency landing on April 1, 2001, following a collision with a Chinese fighter. The wings and tail of a P-3B were used as donor parts to return the aircraft to operational service.

The Sensor System Improvement Program (SSIP) upgrades the EP-3E's communications, collection, and data-automation capabilities. Ten EP-SEs have been modified to the SSIP configuration with the last ARIES II aircraft due for completion of its modification in October 2004. Beginning in 2003, the EP-3E began an upgrade to the Joint Airborne SIGINT Architecture (JASA) Modernization (JMOD) baseline configuration, a state-of-the-art open architecture fully C4ISR aircraft with Link 16 that will include an automated ESM capability on the existing SSIP Fleet Issue 4.0 software backbone. The JMOD Baseline is an evolutionary acquisition program that will improve the EP-3E mission system to achieve airborne JWICS/SIPRNET connectivity, precision direction finding, and low-band multi-platform geo-location in Spiral 1 and a precision targeting capability with the fielding of Spiral 2.

The EP-3E characteristics are similar to those of the P-3C with the exception that it is unarmed, carries a crew of 24, and performs the SIGINT mission. The strengths of the EP-3E are its ability to deploy rapidly with a minimal footprint and to provide tactical support to the warfighter. The EP-3E crew fuses collected SIGINT and off-board information and disseminates the information to support direct threat warning, information dominance, battlespace situational awareness, suppression of enemy air defenses, destruction of enemy air defenses, anti-air warfare, and antisurface warfare.

The EP-3E remains heavily engaged in reconnaissance operations in direct support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom over Afghanistan, as it was in Operations Desert/Storm, Northern Watch, Southern Watch, Desert Fox, and in support of NATO forces in Bosnia. The EP-3E remains the fleet, joint, and theater commander's aircraft of choice for long-dwell SIGINT operations and currently supports joint forces in Korea in addition to worldwide fleet and national reconnaissance missions.

In june 2003, the CNO directed the Navy to pursue the U.S. Army's Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) Program as a replacement for the aging fleet of EP-3Es. ACS is an existing, mature acquisition program that is under development as a replacement for the Army's fleet of RC-12 Guardrail SIGINT aircraft and RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance-Low (ARL) aircraft. ACS-N will be hosted on a mid-sized business or regional jet aircraft, operate at altitudes in excess of 37,000 feet, fly at speeds in excess of 400 mph, and operate with eight-plus hour mission profiles and internal mission/crew payload of approximately 14,000 lbs. The ACS-N system will allow a fully integrated, multi-intelligence, fused operation with a minimum aircraft manning of six operators. ACS-N will rely on automatic digital signal processing, and full-time wideband reach-back connectivity via satellite, air-to-air, air-to-ground, air-to-ship, and LINK 16 capability. The Navy has begun to take measures to enter into a joint acquisition program with the Army with the goal of Navy IOC of 2012. The contenders for the ACS are Lockheed Martin-which will offer the Embraer 145 regional jet-and Northrop Grumman-which will use the General Dynamics Gulfstream G450. The Army has begun the Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase, and expects to down-select to the final industry offerer, prime integrator, and aircraft by March 2004.