The test performance for Raytheon’s [RTN] Joint Land Attack cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) so far has been “eye watering,” the company’s program manager said and it’s ready to provide combatant commanders with persistent surveillance, precise tracking and fire control quality data.
“I believe that we’re ready to deploy this system and get an operational assessment on it,” said Mark Rose, director, JLENS, for Raytheon, in an interview.
A JLENS system, called an orbit, consists of two tethered, 74-meter aerostats connected to mobile mooring stations, and a communications and processing group, Rose said. The aerostats fly around 10,000 feet, and can remain aloft and operational for about a month.
One aerostat carries surveillance radar with 360 degree capability that can reach out to 550 km; the other aerostat carries fire control radar.
Besides the sensors, the aerostats carry communications gear, the Raytheon-Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab’s Cooperative Engagement Capability sensor netting system that can provide precise and correlated tracks and fire control data to ships and planes and to a common operating picture.
The system supports the Army and joint integrated air and missile defense, providing persistent surveillance and tracking for unmanned aerial vehicle and cruise missile defense, ships, cars, trucks as well as the ability to track swarming boats for systems such as Army Patriot and Navy Aegis.
JLENS information is distributed through joint service networks and contributes to the single integrated air picture.
Two separate systems are being tested, one orbit at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) and the other at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), N.M.
The first class of Army soldiers completing mission operator training on the system are now at UTTR conducting on-the-job training with JLENS. Another unit has begun classroom training.
Solders are operating and testing the system at UTTR into the fall and spring when Early User Tests will likely be conducted, Rose said.
This fall, the JLENS program is expecting to work on and test CEC and Link 16 with the Navy’s Desert Ship and Aegis at WSMR, he said.
For example, JLENS successfully completed 22 of 23 Development Test -1 (DT-1) missions in late 2011, and successfully conducted a mission with the Patriot PAC-3 missile in April (Defense Daily, April 30).
So far, Rose said, tests have gone “flawlessly.”
In June 2011 the Secretary of Defense directed JLENS to participate in and conduct an extended test program as part of the Combatant Command Exercise, with $40.4 million provided in October as part of the Fiscal Year 2011 Omnibus Reprogramming funding, with a total of $147.2 million over FY-13-17 funding in FY 2013 president’s budget to pay for the exercise.
However, the program incurred a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach, that was “strictly math,” Rose said. Procurement went to zero.
But The Defense Department did certify the program was essential to national security after a review of its capabilities.
As part of that Nunn-McCurdy review, Rose said, Raytheon took a look at production costs, since they had firm numbers from building two engineering, manufacturing and development Orbits.
“We found costs would be about one-third less than we had been estimating,” he said. Costs came down because Raytheon builds a lot of radars that have common parts, making pricing affordable.
Rose said a plan has been submitted up the chain to complete System Development and Demonstration (SDD) tests and operational assessments and to send JLENS to combatant commanders to assess how it works for them.