ESM F-16용 신형 전자전 시스템 AN/ALQ-257 IVEWS, 비행시험 시작

[위종민]

F-16용의 신형 전자전 시스템인 AN/ALQ-257 IVEWS(Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite)가 지상 시험을 마치고 F-16 블록 50에 장착돼 비행시험을 시작했다고 합니다. 사진상으로는 노스롭 그루먼 소유의 봄바디어 CRJ 시험기에 기수가 이식된 사진도 있네요. 

시험기간은 몇 주 정도이고, 운영평가는 올 4분기까지 완료될 예정이라고 합니다. 

IVEWS는 AN/APG-83 SABR과의 충돌을 줄이기 위한 광범위한 테스트를 거친 완전 디지털 재머이고, 두 시스템을 동시에 사용할 수 있다고 합니다. 현 전장에서 가장 발전된 위협을 탐지, 식별 및 대응할 수 있고 항공기 1기로 전파방사체의 정확한 위치를 파악할 수 있으며, 기체 내부에 장착돼 센터라인 파일런에 장착된 AN/ALQ-131 자기방어 재밍포드를 떼고 보조연료탱크나 폭탄을 장착할 수 있게 된다고 합니다. 

IVEWS와 F-15EX에 탑재된 EPAWSS의 유사성에 대해서는 언급하지 않네요. 

개발과정 중 봄바디어 CRJ 시험기에 이식돼 3년 동안 지상과 공중 시험을 실시했다고 하며, 이 시스템을 통해 F-16이 2040년대까지 신뢰도를 유지할 수 있게 될 것이고 F-16 블록 70 보유국들이 구매를 평가중이라고 합니다. 

New F-16 Electronic Warfare System Enters Flight Test (airandspaceforces.com)

The F-16's new electronic warfare system was tested aboard Northrop Grumman's Bombardier CRJ in the Northern Lightning exercise.

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New F-16 Electronic Warfare System ‘on Par with Fifth-Gen’ Enters Flight Test

Sept. 4, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The F-16’s new electronic warfare suite, the AN/ALQ-257, has begun flight testing after successfully completing ground tests in an anechoic chamber, Northrop Grumman reported.

The Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite, or IVEWS, mounted in a Block 50 F-16, completed an Air Force eval‎uation in the Joint Preflight Integration of Munitions and Electronic Sensors (J-Prime) facility—an anechoic chamber—last month, Northrop said. That same aircraft has been conducting flight tests for about two weeks, and will soon be joined by a second F-16, a company official said. Northrop is not yet cleared to reveal the location of testing.

Flight testing to validate what was learned in the chamber will take just a few weeks, and an operational assessment will be completed “by the fourth quarter of this year,” said James Conroy, vice president of navigation, targeting, and survivability, in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. Developmental and operational testing should be completed in early 2025, and based on the results, the Air Force will decide future milestones such as when production and deliveries can begin and when the first F-16 unit is expected to be declared operational, he said.

“We’re going fast,” Conroy said, because the Air Force’s F-16s “don’t have this kind of survivability equipment” and need it to be operationally relevant. The system is an all-digital jammer that has been extensively tested to cooperate with and deconflict with the F-16’s new AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), an active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar. The two systems can be used simultaneously, Conroy said. Both are made by Northrop.

The electronic warfare system is capable of detecting, identifying and countering “the most advanced threats” on the battlefield today, Conroy said, and can perform accurate geo-location of emitters with just a single aircraft. The simulations in the chamber were “intense,” he said.

The IVEWS will be internal to the F-16 and will replace the centerline-mounted AN/ALQ-131 self-defense jamming pod, freeing one external station on the fighter for a fuel tank or weapon. The system will use antennas located elsewhere on the fuselage; the outer mold line of the aircraft hasn’t been altered, Conroy said.   

He declined to characterize whether the IVEWS is comparable to the Eagle Passive/Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS) being mounted on F-15Es and F-15EXs, saying only that that they are “both advanced electronic warfare systems” and can work together.

The IVEWS is intended to provide the F-16 with electronic warfare capabilities “on a par with fifth-generation aircraft, significantly enhancing survivability for operations in contested and congested electromagnetic spectrum environments,” Northrop said. “Its ultra-wideband suite can detect, identify, and counter advanced radio frequency threats, including millimeter wave systems.”

The IVEWS started out as a Middle-Tier Acquisition program to achieve rapidly fielding; it became an Air Force program of record in 2019.

Conroy said the system will be especially helpful in coping with mobile anti-aircraft radars and missiles whose position is unknown at the start of a mission and which may turn on and fire on F-16s when directly overhead or nearby.

To reach this point, the IVEWS has undergone three years of testing, both on the ground and in the air aboard Northrop’s Bombardier CRJ, acting as a surrogate for the F-16 in the Northern Lightning 2021 exercise, Conroy said. It has also been tested at Hill Air Force Base’s F-16 Block 50 avionics system integration laboratory.

In the chamber, the IVEWS was “subjected to accurate representations of complex radio frequency spectrum threats,” Northrop said in a press release. It demonstrated “the ability to detect, identify, and counter advanced radio frequency threats while operating safely with other F-16 systems.”

Conroy said the system could permit the F-16 to remain credible into the 2040s, and is being eval‎uated by a number of F-16 user countries, particularly those buying the F-16 Block 70. Turkey has signed a letter of agreement selecting the IVEWS for its Block 70s.

Let’s Talk About The F-16’s Next-Generation Electronic Warfare Suite - The Aviationist

Let’s Talk About The F-16’s Next-Generation Electronic Warfare Suite

Let’s Talk About The F-16’s Next-Generation Electronic Warfare Suite

June 7, 2023 Military Aviation

Stefano D'Urso

File photo of a U.S. Air Force F-16 with Have Glass V coating during the exercise Falcon Strike 2022. (Photo: Stefano D’Urso/The Aviationist)The AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite is set to replace the legacy EW systems of the U.S. Air Force F-16 fleet.

The U.S. Air Force and Northrop Grumman are working together to modernize the electronic warfare capabilities of the F-16 fleet, as part of the planned Post Block Integration Team (PoBIT) upgrades. IVEWS provides a next generation EW system that is internal to the F-16 and interoperable with the new on-board APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.

The program which resulted in the creation of the AN/ALQ-257 started in 2019. After developing an IVEWS environmentally and safety of flight certified prototype following a first contract in 2021, last year Northrop Grumman was contracted to complete the development and install the system on several F-16s for flight testing. In April, the company announced that IVEWS has completed U.S. Air Force Laboratory Intelligence Validated Emulator (LIVE) testing.

“As advanced radio frequency threats continue to proliferate, the protection afforded by IVEWS is essential,” said James Conroy, vice president, navigation, targeting and survivability, Northrop Grumman. “This successful eval‎uation under very challenging conditions is an important step on the path to fielding the suite.”

According to the press release, the system exceeded multiple benchmarks and demonstrated the ability to counter modern radio frequency (RF) threats. This was the first time the ultra-wideband architecture of the AN/ALQ-257 IVEWS underwent LIVE testing. LIVE is an intelligence validated, closed-loop RF direct-injection threat radar emulator based on threat capabilities and features, which allows for the testing electronic warfare systems in realistic environments.

During the test, simulated air defense radar pulses were injected directly into IVEWS to verify the suite’s ability to recognize and counter advanced threats. The signals used in LIVE testing are validated models that provide realistic representations of radio frequency threatsc. This rigorous testing program is necessary to ensure that IVEWS will be ready to protect the fourth-generation fighter fleet against the proliferation of advanced radio frequency threats.

In August 2021, a Northrop Grumman test bed aircraft flew with the company’s F-16 IVEWS and APG-83 SABR systems in a dense electromagnetic spectrum environment at the Northern Lightning joint training exercise. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)

“This contract and overall program effort is vital to increase the protection of our F-16 operators as they execute their missions in contested environments,” said last year Maj. Charles Prichard, Chief of Electronic Warfare Integration within the directorate’s F-16 System Program Office. “In order for the F-16 Viper to meet assigned mission sets in line with the CSAF’s Fighter Roadmap and operate in certain environments, the fleet needs an advanced electronic warfare (EW) system. IVEWS lines up with HAF/ACC’s EW plan and recently became the solution that improves the F-16’s survivability and lethality against current and emerging threats.”

IVEWS is fully digital and founded on secure, modular, open systems design principles, with the receiver/exciter architecture providing significant advantages over heritage systems. This technology, according to Northrop Grumman, allows for extended frequency coverage, full spatial coverage, and more rapid responses, allowing operations in contested environments.

Featuring highly efficient broadband power amplifiers and adaptive countermeasure modulations, the AN/ALQ-257 is designed to detect, identify, locate, and defeat next generation sensors and weapons. It is designed to Open Missions Systems requirements and provisioned for long-term growth capability to support future upgrades such as the Fiber Optic Tow Decoy, Adaptive/Cognitive Processing, and Open System Architecture compliance.

Mr. Conroy provided us more details in an emailed statement and confirmed that IVEWS is a complete EW suite, including an integrated digital radar warning receiver (RWR). Although IVEWS utilizes existing antenna locations, the system also uses next-generation antennas to provide the awareness required for operation in advanced threat environments.

IVEWS and its advanced architecture are also fully interoperable with Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars, including the AN/APG-83 SABR which is being installed on the F-16s of the US Air Force fleet. In fact, IVEWS demonstrated real-time integration with the APG-83 radar during rigorous testing in dense electromagnetic spectrum environments against ground-based and airborne emitters.

Northrop Grumman’s AN/APG-83 radar being installed in an Air National Guard F-16 at McEntire Joint National Guard Base, S.C. (U.S. Air Force photo/released)

The company used one of their flying testbeds, a CRJ-700 equipped with IVEWS and a SABR radar inside an F-16’s nosecone, during Exercise Northern Lightning in 2021. The two systems demonstrated full pulse-to-pulse, multi-function interoperability in a contested operational environment. With SABR successfully engaging multiple air and ground targets, IVEWS detected and identified a range of advanced threats, employing advanced jamming techniques capable of defeating those threats when required.

Avoiding legacy methods of radio frequency compatibility ensures that both systems are able to simultaneously operate without restriction to deliver advanced levels of survivability without compromising performance. In fact, one of the most critical aspects of EW systems’ and AESA radars’ testing is to assess that they are interoperable without generating significant interferences.

The ALQ-257 IVEWS is a completely internal electronic warfare suite, incorporating all Electronic Warfare functionality, including jamming of current and future threats. This means that it incorporates all functions previously performed by the ECM pods, freeing the F-16’s centerline station from the ALQ-131 and ALQ-184 pods and allowing it to be used for the 300 gal external fuel tank or other payloads.

IVEWS is currently a program of record electronic warfare suite for the U.S. Air Force F-16 fleet. The system is also exportable for current and previous generations of the F-16. Northrop Grumman is continuing to develop IVEWS in preparation for additional testing and integration on an actual aircraft, with the first F-16 flight expected in 2023.

The production and fielding of IVEWS, with the goal of equipping as many as 450 F-16s, is expected to begin in 2024. However, although Col. Tim Bailey, F-16 System Program Manager, said last year that IVEWS is a ‘must have,’ top priority program to keep the Viper relevant and lethal throughout its extended service life, there are some reports that the Air Force might shift funding away from modernization of the F-16 to prioritize next-generation aircraft.

Until the service takes a final decision, Northrop Grumman is continuing with the development program, with the goal of having the next gen EW system ready for fielding as per contract schedule.

About Stefano D'Urso

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Stefano D'Urso is a freelance journalist and contributor to TheAviationist based in Lecce, Italy. A graduate in Industral Engineering he's also studying to achieve a Master Degree in Aerospace Engineering. Electronic Warfare, Loitering Munitions and OSINT techniques applied to the world of military operations and current conflicts are among his areas of expertise.

[백선호]

재머의 안테나는 과연 어디에 달렸는지 궁금하네요.

30년 넘은 구닥다리 골동품 ALQ-165 ASPJ는 https://cafe.daum.net/NTDS/515G/2665 에 안테나가 달렸습니다.

[ssn688]

오오 포드형이 아니다... 그런데 복좌기에도 장착할 수 있을까요? ASPJ도 단좌기에나 들어가지 복좌기에는 공간이 없을 거란 추정이 있었는데 말입니다.