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JSF Has Eyes Only for Enemy

By Bryant Jordan Monday, June 15th, 2009 8:22 am
Posted in Air, International

Northrop Grumman today made a pitch for the fifth-generation radar system being developed for the F-35 that will come as music to the ears of generals and politicians alike.

The AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array array is intended to give pilots in the still-in-the-future plane the ability to engage air and ground targets at long range and improve situational awareness. But it also comes with the capability of distinguishing between enemy and friendly targets — something that field commanders and policy makers alike understand has real value.

Case in point — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is now telling the newly arrived commander of U.S. and NATO forces, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that one of his top priorities is the elimination of civilian deaths. A series of air strikes against Taliban forces have allegedly killed a number of civilians, making the U.S.‘s job of winning over the support of the Afghans — or keeping that support where it has it — more difficult.

“To eliminate fratricide activities, what we’ve been working on is automatic tracking and queuing software — it’s mostly a software-intensive activity,” Mark Gaertner, business development director ror Aerospace Systems Division at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, told DoDBuzz today in Paris. Northrop Grumman is here promoting its various defense programs.

“Once we identified the targets or the moving targets in the indication software with the radar, we then take those and match them against the data base of proven targets, and the ones that are military targets are then found, and the ones that are not are then taken off the screen or eliminated from sight.”

The company is also highlighting its Distributed Aperture System — DAS — which it says will give the plane essentially 20/20 vision all around the aircraft, day or night, and regardless of cloud cover. DAS also can find and identify weapons systems on the ground and instantly give the information to the pilot, Gaertner said.

Think “the Force” from Star Wars and you’ve got the idea of what Northrop Grumman is saying DAS will do — a kind of constant, unbroken field around the aircraft able to detect, ID and track threats.

And in the air, the system can continuously ID and track friendly and enemy aircraft, making the possibility of friendly fire death in the skies unlikely, he said.

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	Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret June 15th, 2009 at 11:11 am Why is it that my skepticism of all things software driven is off scale high while reading this? Sure, some software is gonna replace good training, good rules of engagement, and good common sense. We are still gonna have fighters shooting down friendly helicopters — due to rushed flight preparation, over eager pilots, touchy IFF systems, etc. We are still gonna have bombs dropped on friendlies — due to tired people who make input mistakes, moving targets, etc. Software can contribute to a solution but more often it contributes to the problem. The pilot has to still look out the window and not be distracted by too much information. And a two person aircraft, such as the F-15E, gives you one guy who is flying while the other guy can stare at targets. But the F-35 will only have a single person on board!
	psece June 15th, 2009 at 11:15 am Technology and software will make war safe one day!
	jimbo June 15th, 2009 at 12:36 pm i dont think war and safe belong in the same sentence.…
	mike j June 15th, 2009 at 12:41 pm it’s an old joke, jimbo. pretty good old joke.
	Alex June 15th, 2009 at 1:02 pm Charles, don’t underestimate this technology. The amount of information that these jet’s computers are processing is irrelevant — what matters and what makes it useful is how the data is presented to the pilot. “Looking out the window” doesn’t help you in BVR engagements or when you are dropping a bomb from 15,000′+. I think some credit is due to software for making war safer, lest we forget that the F-117 was nothing more than a pointy rock without it, or that we can put a 2000lb bomb through a bedroom window at 30,000 feet in bad weather because of it. Software can never fully replace the human brain, but it sure as hell can make things easier for us.
	Daniel June 15th, 2009 at 4:05 pm This is something that is promised all the time but it NEVER works in an actual war. Thier are several reasons why but it never does work. I agree with charles. I think the money spent on this we be better spent on a red flag exercise or other forms of training.
	John the civi June 15th, 2009 at 7:20 pm Their selling a plane…the F-22 already took the invincibility route.
	John the civi June 15th, 2009 at 7:21 pm I mean pitch.
	richardb June 15th, 2009 at 7:28 pm Radar spoofing is as old as WWII chaff. Some smart Chinese, Russian, Iranian lad will figure out how to fake the software into thinking their forces are friendlies to the JSF’s mind. Presto a thousand Chinese warriors simply disappear only to reappear in the rear of American infantry.
	Alex June 15th, 2009 at 7:54 pm Beating IFF isn’t as simple as “spoofing” the radar. You’d have to crack encryption keys so complex that it would take modern supercomputers thousands of years to brute force them. For all intensive purposes, it can’t be done.
	Sgt Oblat June 16th, 2009 at 2:19 am Any buzz of when the DoD will be building the clone army Bryant ?
	Charles Phillips, LtCol USAF Ret June 16th, 2009 at 10:39 am For Alex: trying to cut thru some of the low S/N ratio here! Some good healthy skepticism is beneficial to any program. You make an excellent point that what matters is how the information is presented to the pilot. Too many of our systems overwhelm the crew with information (many managers get that also!) leading to lack of situational awareness. It would be great to have the JSF provide 20/20 awareness all around the aircraft — as long as the crew isn’t forced to examine clouds and birds and all that. Hopefully the system will screen out friendlies and will highlight unknowns, in a usable manner. And will highlight unknowns and not bias the crew towards considering them hostile. We have already shot down too many Blackhawk helicopters — who were squawking known IFF frequencies. My point was more that a two crew aircraft has huge advantages in situational awareness (though a bit of a disavantage in budgetary awareness) where the GIB provides much of what software could have provided.
	Cole June 17th, 2009 at 9:53 pm I strongly doubt this radar can differentiate between civilians, insurgents, friendly dismounts, or enemy dismounts. JSTARS used to only differentiate between wheeled and tracked and could not differentiate between friendly and enemy forces. Longbow radar cannot differentiate between friendly and enemy forces either, I believe. If they are developing radar databases that are useful that will be outstanding. If the radar can cue the DAS for a clear EO/IR picture that would be great. But it still probably will not help much against targets in urban clutter or near Afghan houses where targeting with even a small diameter bomb could cause collateral damage. But the combination of radar and EO/IR/laser designation on the F-35 is still a major advantage over the F-22.