Audio of this text is delivered to you by the Air & Area Forces Affiliation, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their households. Discover out extra at afa.org
4 years after being chosen to supply a self-defense digital warfare suite for the F-16, Northrop Grumman expects to enter manufacturing with the ALQ-257 Built-in Viper Digital Warfare Suite, or IVEWS, as quickly as subsequent 12 months and to discipline the system in fight within the Center East as shortly as doable.
The preliminary manufacturing tranche for the Air Pressure can be on 72 Block 50 F-16s, with extra more likely to come as manufacturing spools up, Northrop vp of focusing on and survivability Jim Conroy instructed Air & Area Forces Journal in an interview.
Within the reconciliation invoice handed by Congress this summer time, there was $187 million allotted to “wrap up among the closing phases of [engineering and manufacturing development], among the formal check actions, after which truly begin some preliminary manufacturing,” Conroy stated.
The fiscal 2026 appropriations invoice—nonetheless but to go—has $250 million for the “first full-rate manufacturing lot,” Conroy added. “So it’s a fully-funded program. We’re prepared to begin manufacturing.”
The preliminary 72 F-16s are to be fitted beneath an Pressing Operational Want from U.S. Central Command, which decided the suites are required for F-16s working within the theater.
U.S. Vipers there have been busy over the previous few years. F-16s based mostly within the Center East within the final two years have shot down Iranian drones fired at Israel, operated above surface-to-air missiles fielded by the regime of former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad and his Russian backers, confronted off Moscow’s warplanes, come beneath risk from Iran and its proxies, fended off Houthi assaults out of Yemen—and even gone into Iran itself as a part of Operation Midnight Hammer.
“That is one among many efforts to maintain our fourth-gen platforms aggressive because the adversary advances,” Lt. Gen. Derek France, the commander of Air Forces Central, instructed reporters at AFA’s Air, Area & Cyber Convention in September. “That’s the bumper sticker, if you’ll.”
That bumper sticker was a part of a push by France and his workforce for higher-ups to behave quick.
“Each CENTCOM and the Division take a look at a myriad of competing issues to determine what their priorities are,” France stated. “However that’s the push from us. It’s one among a number of issues that we expect are essential for us.”
The system will work on any of the “post-Block” F-16 plane, which means Block 40 and later, Northrop says. The Air Pressure has about 600 such fighters, although it has not formally dedicated to purchasing IVEWS for all of them.
“So, how briskly can we go? How fast can we get them put in? These are the conversations we’re having with the U.S. Air Pressure proper now,” Conroy stated. Ultimate meeting will happen at Northrop’s Rolling Meadows, Unwell., services, however Conroy stated the availability base spans many states. There’s no official timeline for filling the requirement; it’s “as quickly as they will … get them,” Conroy stated.
Northrop began flight testing on IVEWS in September 2024, and after 250 hours within the air, the operational evaluation completed in April. The system was deemed efficient in opposition to consultant threats, clearing the way in which for the Air Pressure to spend cash to purchase the system. The Pressing Operational Want got here in September, and the IVEWS was efficiently built-in with the Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) this month, based on an Oct. 27 Northrop press launch.
The ALQ-257 is an inside line-replaceable unit, not like earlier F-16 self-protection digital warfare methods just like the ALQ-131 or ALQ-184 pods, that are mounted on the centerline station beneath the plane. Meaning the system will unencumber an exterior station for gasoline or weapons.
The digital warfare area is “persevering with to advance at an exponential price,” Conroy stated, and the F-16 is in pressing want of a contemporary, built-in EW suite.
“It’s completely vital for survivability, given the altering [radio frequency] atmosphere,” he stated. Quite a few worldwide F-16 companions are doubtless consequently. Turkey has already signed as much as equip its F-16s with IVEWS when it turns into accessible.
The risk atmosphere “just isn’t the identical … that we had over 20 years in the past,” when the Air Pressure final confronted a fight opponent with trendy air protection methods, Conroy stated. In these days, risk installations have been principally mounted.
“You knew precisely the place the risk radars have been and you might virtually pre-plan the missions” to cope with them, he stated. “You knew the place they have been working and so they have been all the time working the identical means. It was a extremely steady panorama.”
Now, risk radars are largely cell, and unlikely to disclose their location till simply earlier than beginning an engagement at shut vary.
“What’s taking place is, they’re ready till you’re throughout the weapons engagement zone, after which they activate. So you may’t simply pre-plan the way you’re going to execute your mission, since you don’t know the place the threats are going to be,” he stated.
The radio frequency atmosphere can be extra densely populated with cell towers, TV and Wi-Fi stations, satellite tv for pc radios, “and the adversary makes use of all this RF noise to cover,” Conroy stated.
The IVEWS sifts via all these indicators, finds those that pose a risk—Conroy referred to as it “the needle within the haystack”—and jams them.
“And simply as our methods have grow to be increasingly software-dependent … the risk radars have additionally achieved that. So it’s essential to have a system that’s extensible and is adaptable to that altering atmosphere,” he stated.
The IVEWS doesn’t require the F-16’s energetic electronically-scanned array radar to work, Conroy stated. The 2 methods can use the identical portion of the spectrum on the identical time with out interfering with each other.
“There isn’t any filtering, blanking, or discount of the radar’s coapabilities whereas IVEWS protects the platform,” Northrop stated in a press launch. “The 2 methods talk digitally on a pulse-to-pulse foundation, so every is conscious of what portion of the spectrum the opposite is utilizing at each second. Pilots can perform intense radar duties with out compromising the power of IVEWS to counter adversary threats.”
The majority of IVEWS operational testing—in a “related atmosphere”—was accomplished by the tip of 2024, however the two F-16s used within the analysis have continued to fly out of Eglin Air Pressure Base, Fla., since, racking up greater than 200 sorties and 300 flight hours, Conroy stated, “to search out the boundaries of the system.” The system flew within the 2021 train Northern Lightning.
Conroy stated the IVEWS was not designed to harmonize with different fighter EW suites, just like the F-15’s Eagle Passive Energetic Warning Survivability System, however they don’t intrude with each other—as seen in USAF workout routines—and there’s no purpose the info they gather can’t be shared, Conroy stated.
The plane has “flown in one-v-one situations, one-v-many … in opposition to probably the most superior platforms. They’ve gone in opposition to floor platforms, floor, and a mixture of all of these.”
The IVEWS just isn’t restricted to detection, identification, and countermeasures, however may also geo-locate adversary emitters. On some earlier methods, geo-location couldn’t be achieved concurrently with the opposite features. The geo-location occurs robotically and is clear to the pilot.
Northrop is working with Lockheed on supplying IVEWS to overseas prospects of the new-build F-16V in the event that they request the system. Installs on new-build plane would occur at Lockheed’s Greenville, S.C. facility, however may be achieved elsewhere as properly.
Audio of this text is delivered to you by the Air & Area Forces Affiliation, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their households. Discover out extra at afa.org