By Geoff Fein
The Navy has begun a Systems Design and Development (SDD) effort to incorporate a data link into Boeing‘s [BA] Harpoon missile and Raytheon‘s [RTN] Joint Stand-Off Weapon making the two systems the first true network enabled development efforts, a Navy official said.
The goal is to develop a better target selectivity capability without having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a development effort, Capt. Mat Winter, the Navy’s program manager for Precision Strike Weapons, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“What we have done, the Navy and Air Force together, is generated a new network enabled (NEW) message set on the Link 16 architecture. So it is a NEW J message called [a] J-11 message,” Winter said.
Combat commanders told the Navy that Harpoon Block I is good, “but it is like a bulldog,” Winter said.
“When it opens up and it starts searching, the first contact it sees it is going to kill,” he said. “We need better target selectivity capability, at a blue collar cost.”
Along with the traditional longitude, latitude, velocity and height attributes that are carried in the message set, there is also a set of error attributes of the sensor that is painting the target, Winter explained.
“So that you know if its error ellipsoid is north, south, east, west, that [information] can be provided to the missile and the missile can then, because of what we are doing in the missile’s operational flight program (OFP), take that and it can fly its logic,” Winter said.
The data will minimize the error sensitivities of whoever is painting the target, so that the missile can fly toward the target of interest, he added.
“The idea here is to engage in a target ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) perspective, painting those targets, providing that information somehow to the missile so that missile continually gets the latitude and longitude update,” Winter said. “But more importantly, [it] gets some heuristic information of the ISR sensor that’s painting it, because what happens is the error sensitivities of that radar or the platform that is painting that information, in and of itself, reduces errors that the missile doesn’t know about.”
The Navy is doing the same thing with JSOW, Winter noted.
“The idea here is that you need to be able to have ISR platforms–the Littoral Surveillance Radar Surveillance (LSRS), Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS), E-2s…to be able to not just paint, which they can do now, but generate J-11 messages, transmit J-11 messages, and receive J-11 messages,” he said. “Right now they don’t have that in their OFPs. We need to be able to send that out on the net to F-18s that have Harpoons and JSOWs on their wing that they are getting ready to launch and then you have to have the missiles be able to receive that.”
The effort that is bringing that all together is called the Joint Surface Warfare Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration (JSUW JCTD), Winter said.
“We are the technical manager for this. We are working on behalf of PACOM (Pacific Command). PACOM has a MCO (major combat operations) scenario out there that might have lots of ships running around in water where they want to kill one but not another one,” Winter said. “So they asked us to demonstrate the ability to increase the probability of kill. That’s all they asked, that’s what they want to do. We came back and said should we use dumb bombs, should we use special ops…hey, we got these things called Harpoons and JSOWs in our inventory, why don’t we see if we can do something with that.”
The JSUW JCTD right now is coordinating LSRS and JSTARS, F-18s, DDGs, JSOW and Harpoon, he added.
“So the Block III Harpoon, programmatically, we are in the process…just kicking off and going on contract with Boeing,” Winter said. “Boeing is our industry partner for Harpoon and we will modify the missile. We will not build a new missile. We have taken missiles out of inventory and we are squirting in a new OFP so it can receive and generate J-11 messages.
“But that is the primary thing we are doing to the missile and then we are making sure the F-18 can generate J-11 messages, and also the DDGs and CGs because Harpoon is a surface and air launched capability for the Navy,” he added.
The Navy will have that capability, ready to demonstrate as a military utility assessment for the JCTD at the end of FY ’10, Winter said. The Harpoon Block III will go to initial operational capability (IOC) for the Navy in FY ’11.
A similar effort is underway with the JSOW-C1. In fact, Winter pointed out that the data link that is going to be used in the JSOW-C1 is similar to the one that will be used in the Harpoon Block III. He said the Navy did that for a reason.
“We brought Raytheon and Boeing together, an incredible demonstration of industry cooperation, and they competed and selected a single vendor to provide the weapon’s data link,” Winter said. “[It’s] an incredible cost avoidance to the taxpayer and for the life cycle for both of these [weapons]…a very good business case for commonality for capability.”
Raytheon is developing JSOW-C1, and the weapon should go to IOC in FY ’10, Winter noted. “We are exceeding all expectations right now. JSOW-C1 is doing very well.”
The modification will include adding the data link and updating JSOW’s software, but the lethality package stays the same as does the seeker, he added.
“So when we talk about testing it, we are not going to have to go through a complete series of lethality testing because it’s already done that,” Winter said. “The real testing, along with Harpoon Block III, is that interoperability and systems of systems validation.”
The Navy will need to demonstrate that it is not putting something on the weapon that can talk on the net, but there is nobody else out there to answer back.
“We are not only doing the development of the OFP and networking, we also got our warfighters coming in and doing simulation to develop the CONOPS (concept of operations) so it is not just program managers out here talking about putting things together,” Winter said.
The Navy hired Mitre to help with system engineering. Winter said the company has already raised questions about passing targeting information from an LSRS straight to a F-18’s missile.
Winter added the Navy is having those discussion in FY ’08 so that in FY ’10 when network weapons come out, the service has a rule book. So that the rules have not just been thought up by guys wearing uniforms doing acquisition, but by the COCOMS, the COCOM staffs, and the men and women fighting the war right now, he said.
While JSOW-C1 will be able to go after moving targets, Winter said the Navy will first have to show the weapon’s ability for pursuing maritime targets. That testing occurs at the end of FY ’09, beginning of FY ’10, for a mid FY ’10 IOC.
Winter added he envisions that as JSOW-C1 is deployed, if the Navy can demonstrate a need for moving land target acquisition, they will probably put together the case to conduct a couple of target tests out at Naval Air Warfare Center China Lake, Calif. “But that is not in our scope right now.”