HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah, 16 Sept. 2013. U.S. Air Force flight training experts needed realistic simulation and training equipment to help Air Force combat aircraft crews learn to evade anti-aircraft missiles, anti-aircraft artillery, and other radar threats. They found their solution from the Northrop Grumman Corp. Amherst Systems segment in Buffalo, N.Y.
Officials of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, awarded a $219.1 million contract to Northrop Grumman last week for follow-on production for the Joint Threat Emitter (JTE).
The JTE provides realistic warfighter training for combat aircrews and provides a modern, reactive battlespace war environment, designed to help train military personnel to identify and counter enemy missile or artillery threats.
The system has a multi-threat, hi-fidelity simulator with realistic effective radiated power levels, and simulates single and double-digit surface-to-air and anti-aircraft artillery radar systems to train combat aircrews to defeat or avoid integrated air defense systems (IADS) in a war-like training environment, Northrop Grumman officials say.
"When they go to a real-world situation, they won't see anything that we haven't thrown at them before," says Staff Sgt. Rick Woltkamp, 266th Range Squadron ground radar systems craftsman with the Idaho Air National Guard. "We simulate a ground attack, and the pilot will react and respond accordingly to the simulation."
A computer-based system in the JTE collects the data and evaluates the aircrew's response to the simulated threat signal to give aircrews insight on their performance during their training sortie.
On this contract Northrop Grumman will provide JTE first article and production units, and associated drawings, technical orders, retrofit kits, provisioning, and software. The company will do the work in Buffalo, N.Y., and should be finished by March 2016.
For more information contact the Northrop Grumman Amherst Systems online at www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/BusinessSectors/ElectronicSystems/Pages/Amherst, or the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base at www.hill.af.mil.
