Boeing 737 AEW & C

Boeing has successfully tested the Counter Measures Dispenser System for Australia's Project Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control system, the company announced Monday.
"The testing program verified that the Boeing-installed self-protection system will effectively counter its intended threats reliably and safely," Kermit Hollinger, Electronic Warfare manager for Boeing AEW&C Programs, said in a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]. "This milestone is the latest example of Boeing's ability to integrate military systems onto commercial aircraft and provide our customers with low-risk, cost-effective solutions to their operational requirements."
The tests included 19 flights in September and October off the Washington coast and over Puget Sound, dispensing more than 500 units of chaff and flares. Their completion is a key step toward verification of the Wedgetail's overall Electronic Warfare Self-Protection capability, Boeing said.
Project Wedgetail includes six 737 AEW&C aircraft plus ground support segments for mission crew training, mission support and system maintenance.

The [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Wedgetail that arrived here yesterday will be formally delivered the Royal Australian Air Force on 24 November after a costly, three-year delay.

RAAF Air Marshal Mark Binksin, however, confirms to Flight Daily News that the aircraft are not scheduled to become operational until late 2010. Lingering problems with the electronic support measures (ESM) suite supplied by BAE Systems Australia prevent the RAAF from using the airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft in operations.
The RAAF's flight and ground crews will start using the first two of six Wedgetails on order in January for training, Binskin says.
The non-operational delivery later this month is long-awaited after radar and ESM development problems delayed first delivery from 2006 and cost [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] $1 billion in write-downs to fix the problems.

The Australian government's concerns prompted an engineering review by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratories, which reaffirmed that Boeing and Northrop [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]'s technical approach was indeed valid.

Boeing is now marketing the 737 Wedgetail design to the United Arab Emirates, which is also considering rival bids of the Northrop E-2D Advanced Hawkeye and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Erieye.
Binskin, speaking at the Defense International Air Chiefs conference, said the Wedgetail fleet will dramatically improve the RAAF's ability to monitor and protect Australia's vast border and maritime possessions, as well as better co-ordinate regional air operations.

Australia has taken delivery of two Boeing "Wedgetail" Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft from Boeing, although issues remain to be resolved with the aircraft, the Australian Department of Defense [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Thursday.
"The Wedgetail aircraft is a 'first of type' development and extremely complex, given the range of cutting-edge radar technology and sensors that will be incorporated into each aircraft," AEW&C Program Manager, Air Vice Marshal Chris Deeble, said in a news release. "Development, test and evaluation are still ongoing with many hurdles still to be overcome, particularly with respect to radar, electronic support measures and integrated system performance and stability.
"However with the initial delivery of two aircraft, Defence will now be able to conduct familiarization training while Boeing completes the remaining test program and acceptance activities."
Boeing has currently scheduled initial acceptance of the first two aircraft, with the aircraft coming into Australian ownership, for the first quarter 2010. Australia is set to eventually acquire six Wedgetails at a cost of more than $3.7 billion (U.S.).

Australia accepts first two Boeing Wedgetails into RAAF
Australia has accepted the first two Project Wedgetail 737 Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft into the Royal Australian Air Force fleet, Boeing announced Tuesday.
"This major milestone demonstrates that the 737 AEW&C system is ready for operational training and use," Maureen Dougherty, Boeing vice president, AEW&C Program, said in a news release. "It also represents the culmination of years of design, development, modification and testing by the Boeing-led team to bring this complex system -- the first of its type -- to our first AEW&C customer."
Readers might remember a November [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] that Australia had taken delivery of the first two Wedgetails.
Acceptance of the Wedgetails cleared the way for Australian forces to conduct familiarization training while Boeing continued testing and other work. Tuesday's move "means ground and flight operations and maintenance of the aircraft are now fully under RAAF control," Boeing said.
Boeing is scheduled to deliver three more Wedgetails to the RAAF by the end of this year, including one upgraded in the final AEW&C configuration with Electronic Support Measures, and upgrade the entire Wedgetail fleet to the final configuration early next year.

Turkey's first 737-based AEW aircraft makes UK debut

737-based airborne early warning and control system aircraft is making its UK debut this week, with the company having brought the Turkish air force's first example to the show.
Ankara has ordered four AEW&C platforms, which feature equipment including a Northrop Grumman multi-role electronically scanned array, or "Top Hat" on the modified airliner's fuselage.
Boeing is in negotiations with Turkey over the delivery schedule for the new type, which has been the subject of development delays. Turkish Aerospace Industries has already completed work to modify the air force's second and third aircraft, and the fourth is "well under way", Boeing says.

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Turkey could receive its first operational aircraft during 2011, an industry source suggests.
The Royal Australian Air Force is now conducting training with its first three of six "Wedgetail" AEW&C aircraft, and Boeing also recently conducted the first flight of the adapted 737 for South Korea, its remaining other customer for the type.

Australian Wedgetail Radar Finally Comes Of Age

Australia is finally fielding its first early warning and control aircraft—the Boeing/Northrop Grumman Wedgetail—which will tie together the air force’s airborne network-centric organization when it becomes operational later this year.
But depending on how you count, it is arriving 4-5 years late. The Australian military was stunned in 2006 to discover that the Wedgetail’s large, long-range radar still needed both hardware and software improvements.
The first problem involved the “end-fire” portion of the radar that provides the fore and aft segment of its 360-deg. coverage. A long, hollow chamber atop the radar had been carefully shaped to deflect a portion of the radar’s beams 90 deg. from the vertical to the horizontal, accelerate and shape those beams into waves and fire them—both ahead of and behind—the aircraft. The fore and aft scanning filled in the coverage between side arrays that looked left and right.
The “top hat” chamber should have acted like a well-designed music hall to carry the sound undistorted to the audience in the back rows. Because the technology was new, the original chamber fitted above the vertically firing, transmitter modules (that created the fore and aft transmissions) was built 4-in. too short. The result was an electronic cacophony of distorted signals.
The top hat with its end-fire array, positioned on top of the radar’s dorsal fin, was new technology developed for the Wedgetail program. Engineers were inventing the theory to build the radar, which involves more than 1,000 radar signal radiators that feed the long, narrow pedestal array. The radiators assigned to fore and aft coverage point straight up from what is called the “bed of nails” [referring to the rows of hundreds of emitters on the floor of the cavity].
The antenna modeling, which was being invented during the early stages of the program, “indicated there needed to be a 10-in. separation” between the radiating surface and the top of the radome cavity,” says Bob Hendrix, chief architect for Northrop Grumman’s ISR systems division. “This separation ultimately proved insufficient during testing, causing a partial redesign of the radome and perturbation to the program.”
The end-fire design creates a traveling plane wave that grows in power as it moves either forward or backward along the cavity. But because the space was too narrow, the phasing of the wave did not allow it to be strengthened and shaped properly by the subsequent rows of emitters.
“It’s like an orchestra where the conductor needs to make sure that each musician does not absorb or distort the sound from the others,” Hendrix says.
Designers created a program to increase the outer mold line of the aircraft, but that created an aerodynamic impact on the aircraft, which had to be defined and compensated for by a new series of wind tunnel tests that added to the delay.
“These L-band T/R modules are very high-power because they have to see hundreds of miles in all directions,” Hendrix says. “Fighters have a more limited scan [perhaps 120 deg. or less] and don’t have to look that deep. Now we have very stable hardware and software so that we can make many improvements—perhaps for a 10-year window—with software modifications. “
A second, longer-lasting problem was refining the software for the baseline Wedgetail missions and capabilities that were constantly evolving as electronically scanned array radar technology matured.
“Part of what took so long was wrapped up in [tweaking the software],” Hendrix says. “We had to optimize the radar and IFF [automated identification friend or foe] processing to pull tiny targets out of cluttered backgrounds. You are always challenged by the false alarm rate. You have to reduce that for the surveillance operators.”
But the benefits—shrouded in classification—may be worth the wait. Given enough funding for software development, those benefits include focusing radar beams on a single point to serve as anti-missile weapons or generating data beams that can be packed with algorithms to invade enemy communications networks.
When the available power is focused through a smaller sector of coverage, the output goes up, which allows the detection of smaller objects at longer range. The new target set includes stealthy cruise missiles and aircraft now under development by Russian and Chinese industries for export. Greater computing power allows the easier identification of objects whether they are moving or not.

Boeing Sees Big Special-Mission 737 Market

Boeing sees a potential market for more than 150 special-mission 737 military aircraft derived from either the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft or Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft.
The focus is largely on missions currently using C-130, P-3 or 707-based aircraft, which “are getting old,” says Bob Feldmann, Boeing vice president and general manager for surveillance and engagement.
One part of the effort is expanding the customer base for existing products, with the United Arab Emirates, India and Japan seen as potential buyers of a Wedgetail-type aircraft on top of the sales of six of the type to Australia, and four each to South Korea and Turkey. Boeing sees a market for more than 15 of such aircraft. South Korea is to receive its first aircraft this year and Turkey next year.
For the P-8, where the U.S. Navy is committed to 117 aircraft and India eight, Feldmann says Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Italy could lead to sales of more than 75 units. Furthermore, Feldmann says “we know that U.S. Navy and [U.K.] are having some discussions.” The talks right now are government to government.
Another thrust is taking on new missions. Among those is serving as a replacement of the EC-130 Compass Call communications jammer, the WC-135 Constant Phoenix atmospheric sampling aircraft, or the open skies aircraft.
Although the Compass Call mission as currently performed seems an ill fit for a 737, Feldmann argues that “Compass Call of yesterday may not be Compass Call of tomorrow,” suggesting the mission could evolve.
Replacing Navy special-mission P-3s and the U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft are also on the drawing board. The company projects a market for more than 50 such aircraft. “None of those are in a proposal stage,” Feldmann concedes.
Perhaps the nearest-term opportunity is the Airborne Ground Surveillance application, where Boeing wants the 737 to replace the 707-based Joint Stars. The U.S. Air Force is conducting an analysis of alternatives into the mission area. Feldmann argues that the 737 path would provide big savings in terms of logistics support and fuel burn. The market is projected at more than 15 aircraft.

Boeing delivers first Peace Eye to South Korea

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A [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]-led team Wednesday delivered the first Peace Eye [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft to South Korea’s air force.

“Peace Eye increases South Korea’s self-defense capacity with powerful airborne-surveillance and battle-management capabilities that will help enhance the security of the Korean peninsula,” Randy Price, Peace Eye program manager for Boeing, said in a news release.

Korean Aerospace Industries in Sacheon, Korea, is modifying three more Peace Eye aircraft, set for delivery next year.

The 737 AEW&C aircraft is based on the Boeing 737-700 airliner. Boeing and its team are also building such aircraft for Australia and Turkey.