Raytheon’s [RTN] persistent surveillance tethered aerostat and sensors, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS), has essentially completed development tests recently with a successful Early User Test (EUT) and now prepares for next year’s Operational Evaluation at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.
“The EUT is a key milestone to a path to going to Aberdeen and participating in that exercise over the next three years: 2014 through 2017,” Doug Burgess, JLENS program director, said July 24 during a press briefing.
Dean Barten, the Army’s JLENS product manager, said:. “With EUT under our belts, we are well on our way to deploying the system to Aberdeen Proving Ground for an operational evaluation, and ultimately, putting JLENS in the hands of the warfighter.”
Each JLENS system, called an “Orbit,” is comprised of two tethered 74 meter aerostats, which are about three-quarters the size of a football field. One aerostat carries a surveillance radar with a 360 degree view to detect and track such things as airplanes, missiles, boats, ground targets, cruise missiles, and large rockets, and pass the information to soldiers on the ground. The second aerostat carries a fire control radar, which can also detect and track, but “focuses its energy on particular targets of interest,” Burgess said.
The two radars work together to focus on the “real…and significant” threat from cruise missiles, swarming boats, unmanned aircraft and short-range ballistic missiles, he said.
“Completing EUT is the latest in a string of JLENS achievements that include detecting a ballistic-missile surrogate, and enabling the intercept of cruise missile targets with the Patriot and Standard Missile 6,” said Dave Gulla, Raytheon’s vice president of Global Integrated Sensors.
The first Early User Test was conducted last fall. A lot of lessons were learned during that first test that were incorporated into procedures and training on the system for soldiers leading up to the May 4-June 14 EUT, Burgess said.
The JLENS EUT 2 was conducted at the Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, using one of two existing systems. The EUT was divided into two pieces. The first part tested JLENS endurance, where they were sent aloft and maintained for 20 days. This flushed out the reliability and stability aspects of the system and let soldier-operators and maintainers see how well it worked over an extended period of time, he said.
The second piece was examining how the system performed in a variety of missions. The Army ran 21 different missions, using surrogates of the target set threats.
The Army Test and Evaluation Command collected data on the tests and will issue a report.
Burgess said, “We felt we’ve hit some high marks with respect to showing how the system operates…”
There were some system aborts, but not as many as had been seen previously and almost all have been “fixed and resolved,” he said. The remainder will be resolved by the end of the development period, the end of September.
“We strongly feel the system is ready to be deployed and operated by the soldiers themselves,” Burgess said.
Essentially testing on the JLENS system is complete, he said. The Orbit 1 JLENS system in Utah used in EUT 2 will be taken down, packed and shipped to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., where some facilities construction will be done to accommodate the system. Then the system will be reconstituted and ready to go into Operational Evaluation about this time next year, he said. The future of the second system, Orbit 2, is still under discussion.