PHILADELPHIA – U.S. Navy avionics experts needed a company to upgrade, maintain, and repair identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) transponders for military aircraft including the F/A-18 Hornet carrier-based jet fighter-bomber. They found their solution from BAE Systems.
Officials of the Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support activity in Philadelphia announced a $14.8 million to the BAE Systems Electronic Systems segment in Greenlawn, N.Y., to repair the AN/APX-111 Mode 5 combined interrogator transponder aboard the F/A-18 aircraft.
An IFF transponder is an identification system designed for command and control. It enables military and civilian air traffic controllers and interrogation systems to identify aircraft as friendly, and to determine their bearing and range from the interrogator.
The IFF system consists of an airborne transponder and a ground or airborne interrogator. The system measures the distance and heading to the aircraft, and the transponder encodes identification and position information into the response. IFF Mode 5 is the most recent implementation of the system.
The transponders are built on an open-system architecture and high-density field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology that provides for system flexibility and future systems improvements through software-only upgrade efforts.
On this contract BAE Systems will do the work in Greenlawn, N.Y., and should be finished by December 2028. For more information contact BAE Systems Electronic Systems online at www.baesystems.com, or the Naval Supply Systems Command Weapon Systems Support activity-Philadelphia at www.navsup.navy.mil/NAVSUP-Enterprise/NAVSUP-Weapon-Systems-Support.
