The US Air Force (USAF) has completed an operational assessment (OA) of Northrop Grumman’s ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS) with the Lockheed Martin F-16.
“We got through our OA testing very recently, and we’ve seen some fantastic performance,” says Cyrus Dhalla, Northrop’s vice-president and general manager, navigation, targeting and survivability.
Conducted from Eglin AFB in Florida, the activity totalled roughly 100h across 70 sorties, taking total flight hours of the system to around 250h.
“It’s been performing amazingly well against a whole set of threat environments that they’ve demonstrated against,” Dhalla told FlightGlobal at the Royal International Air Tattoo in the UK on 19 July.
Describing earlier work to install the new self-protection technology on two USAF test assets as having been “relatively painless”, he says it was described by pilots as “working first time every time”.
IVEWS is slated for installation on legacy F-16s for the USAF and Air National Guard, with Dhalla noting: “Increasingly it’s becoming about the electromagnetic spectrum – that’s really where the fight is today.
“The F-16 has been in service for a long time, and as we… see where the threats have been going, IVEWS is really keeping that fourth-generation platform relevant, with fifth-generation capabilities.”
In addition to providing a retrofit capability for US fighters, he notes: “And then we are looking at how we can bring it to the rest of the global market. Anyone who is looking to operate in the modern threat environment is where we are targeting.”
Noting that there over 2,000 F-16 fighters in operational use around the world, he describes this as “a great opportunity to keep those platforms relevant”. Northrop also offers its IVEWS fit as an option for customers of new-build Block 70/72-standard examples.
