Northrop Grumman has received a $43 million contract to upgrade the avionics of the U.S. Air Force fleet of E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint Stars).
[E-8C Joint Stars. Photo, courtesy of Northrop Grumman.]
Joint Stars, the airborne command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) platform for the U.S. Air Force’s air-to-ground battle management and surveillance operations, has achieved more than 83,000 combat hours. The platform provides surveillance of weather patterns as well as ground-based enemy forces in the field.
The upgrades will also provide improvements for the ground-based portion of the Joint Stars program, replacing computers in the operator work stations (OWS), radar signal processor, and migrates the OWS operating system to a Linux-based open-system architecture. The E-8C’s onboard network infrastructure will also be upgraded to increase bandwidth and improve operator communications.
“The open-architecture technology insertion will enable cost-effective upgrades well into the future, allowing us to keep the platform relevant to address emerging threats, while also helping target and identify hostile movement more quickly and efficiently,” said Bryan Lima, program director of the Joint Stars program at Northrop Grumman.
Related: Military Avionics News