Roughly a year’s time and $5 million have given Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System the new ability to track “dismounted targets,” combining this new ability with a dramatically expanded capacity to transmit Ground Moving Target Information to “customers” on the ground. According to a program update by contractor Northrop Grumman, Joint STARS aircraft are being upgraded under an urgent operational requirement, in response to irregular warfare requirements in Afghanistan. Northrop evaluated the E-8C’s extant radar, implementing minimal changes to software and detection thresholds, enabling it to track human-sized “dismounted” targets, as well as the larger vehicle-sized targets it was designed for. A new satellite data link augments this capacity with the ability to transmit GMTI via secure SIPRNET, cutting processing and dissemination from approximately 18 hours to near real-time availability.
JADC2 Spurring Changes to Fighter Jets, Ops Centers
Dec. 2, 2020
Aerospace experts offered a peek into how joint all-domain command and control might begin changing the Air Force over the next few years, during RAND Corp.’s West Coast Aerospace Forum on Dec. 2. Expect the upcoming fiscal 2022 and 2023 budgets to majorly accelerate combat networking demonstrations and related technology…