By Michael Sirak
Boeing [BA] has joined forces with Northrop Grumman [NOC] to offer the Air Force an affordable and comparatively low-risk solution to installing powerful jamming pods on the B-52H bomber aircraft so that the venerable platform could disrupt enemy air defense radar from standoff distances in addition to its normal strike roles, according to representatives from both aerospace giants.
The Air Force calls this concept the B-52 Core Component Jammer (CCJ). While the CCJ is currently not a program of record, the service has previously expressed its desire in pursuing this capability to meet the pressing requirement to be able to jam long-range surveillance radars from afar so that strike aircraft can penetrate defended airspace (Defense Daily, Nov. 9, 2006 and Nov. 16, 2006). The previous program envisioned to address this capability gap, the B-52 Stand-Off Jammer (SOJ), was cancelled after its costs rose significantly (Defense Daily, Sept. 27, 2006).
This week discussions are expected within the Pentagon that could have an impact on the CCJ’s future.
“We just wanted to come and say we are ready,” Scot Oathout, Boeing’s director of B-52 Programs, told Defense Daily. “We have been working this and we are ready to support the Air Force if this actually becomes a program.”
“Between us, we think we can help them get there with the right solution,” he continued. “You have the [electronic attack] expertise and the aircraft expertise married together. It is the perfect match.”
Boeing built the B-52H, the last of which rolled off the production line in the early 1960s. Although old by chronological standards, both Air Force and industry officials have said these aircraft have a lot of life left in them, noting that the anticipated service life of them goes out to 2040.
Northrop Grumman built the jamming pods for the Navy’s EA-6B Prowler jamming aircraft and is supplying them for the sea service’s EA-18G Growlers that will replace the Prowlers.
Officials from Boeing and Northrop Grumman said the CCJ program would benefit from the experience of both companies working together on programs like Growler, which uses Boeing’s F/A-18 airframe.
“Similar to what we did with the Navy, [we are] bringing together the two experts for a low-risk, on-schedule, affordable program,” Pat McMahon, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s Electronic Support & Attack Solutions, told Defense Daily. “When we teamed before, we have shown that we can be successful. At this point, we want to be there for the Air Force, if this is what they choose to do.”
Boeing is the team leader.
The CCJ would be one piece in the U.S. military’s future airborne electronic attack architecture that will consist of modified fighter jets with jamming pods to serve as escorts, air-launched decoys and perhaps penetrating unmanned aircraft. It involves fitting 40-foot jammers in pods on the wingtips of the B-52s. The modifications would not impact the bomber’s ability to carry bombs and missiles and deploy them.
Oathout and McMahon said the CCJ would leverage the work that the Air Force Research Laboratory has done with low-band phased-arrays since the SOJ was terminated in late 2005.
“The Air Force has kept things going,” he said. “They have had great progress and very good results in that investment they have done over the last several years.”
The CCJ, he continued, “is a tremendously lower risk program than the Stand Off Jammer program…Electronic attack or electronic warfare programs are not low risk. We all know that, [but] I think we have gotten this as low as we can. You don’t get second chances, Budgets are tight. We have to bring forward the right solution.”
The CCJ team says modification work on the B-52s would be completed at Boeing’s Support Systems facility in Wichita, Kan., and at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Bethpage, N.Y.