Northrop Grumman says it has tested an enhanced targeting capability on a Joint STARS test aircraft, on which crews demonstrated “precision and long-term tracking of maritime targets.” Testers also used a current standard off-the-shelf server, integrating it into the aircraft’s data management baseline. Use of COTS hardware is not new to Joint STARS; Northrop changed over the entire fleet to “open systems” configuration in 2005. Northrop received a contract for the Enhanced Land/Maritime Mode system earlier this year.
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has two new squadrons of F-35s at its disposal in Alaska just as “quite a bit of action” has taken place in the combatant command’s area of responsibility and the “advanced threats” there are becoming “more lethal,” said the squadrons’ wing commander, Col. David J. Berkland. Berkland’s…