U.S. Navy To Adapt EA-18G To Future Of Agile Emitters [LOTS of words NOT excerpted below so best - you know]
21 May 2019 Steve Trimble
» Waveform-hopping radars drive EA-18G upgrades
» Requirements emerge for low-band receiver and machine-learning
» Navy plan does not include new aircraft production
"...the EA-18G could soon face adversary radars that have capabilities far beyond anything experienced by the EA-6B in its four-decade career. The threat is posed by a new breed of radars that can sense the presence of the EA-18G’s jammers and adapt. By shifting to different waveforms and signal-processing techniques, it may be possible to mitigate the transmission interference caused by the EA-18G’s jammers. In keeping with the cat-and-mouse game of electronic combat, the latest countermeasure swiftly inspires a response.... [then stuff about 'DASH X']
...In the final appropriations bill for fiscal 2019, lawmakers slipped in an extra $95.3 million for the EA-18G, with the directive to transition a small but critical science and technology program launched by the Office of Naval Research five years earlier into operational service. This “Cognitive Electronic Warfare capability” would be identified in the Navy’s latest budget justification documents released in March as the official “start to EA-18G [Block] II modernization.”
“It is about adaptive and distributed processing, with big computers to process and react to the threats,” Tebo says. “All of this is accomplished through software-defined radios that are enabled through a flexible and adaptable hardware architecture. That not only gives the Navy step-function capability now, it allows us to continue to evolve the capability.”
The full details of the EA-18G Block II configuration are still being defined.... But the broad outlines of the upgrades are already clear: improved sensors feeding data to new processors that are running software with machine-learning algorithms to produce adaptive techniques for the previously announced Next-Generation Jammers now in development. Underlying the upgrades specifically for the EA-18G are a host of improvements that are in development for the F/A-18E/F Block III. These include new 10 X 19-in. large area displays in cockpit stations as well as conformal fuel tanks.... [then a lot of stuff with acronyms galore - best read it all with sauce]
...Instead of the original plan to buy 90 aircraft to support the Navy’s carrier air wings alone, the Navy bought 160 to also support the land-based airborne electronic-attack mission abandoned by the Air Force.
So far, the Navy has no interest in buying any more aircraft, Tebo says. The EA-18G Block II strategy calls for retrofitting either a portion or all of the 160 aircraft that will be delivered by July. Of course, Boeing is open to selling more EA-18Gs to the Navy if the opportunity arises. “The design [of the upgrade package] is not precluding new production,” Tebo says.
As one of the Navy’s youngest fleets—the average service life remaining on 156 aircraft delivered through March 2019 was 5,886 flight hours, according to the Navy—the EA-18G is unlikely to require the service-life extension program mandated for the F/A-18E/F fleet, although an assessment is still ongoing, Tebo adds.
But it is also not clear how long the EA-18G will fit into the Navy’s fleet. An influential study released earlier this year by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies called for replacing the EA-18G in the carrier air wing within 20 years. “Its reliance on stand-off effects from outside the range of enemy air defenses is likely unsustainable in the face of improving passive sensors and the increasing range of surface-to-air missiles,” the CSBA report concluded. The think tank recommended transferring the EA-18G’s mission system to a future UCAV."
