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MITRE Helps Keep AWACS Flying December 2002
Our military commanders love it and our enemies fear it. It's the E-3 Sentry aircraft with its Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS)—the premier air battle command and control aircraft in the world. Flying at 30,000 feet in a modified Boeing 707 airframe, the AWACS uses its powerful S-band rotating radar atop the fuselage to survey an enormous volume of airspace. The radar has a range of more than 200 miles for low-flying targets and even farther for vehicles flying at medium to high altitudes. Augmented by an Identification Friend or Foe subsystem, the radar can look down to detect, identify, and track enemy and friendly low-flying aircraft by eliminating ground clutter returns that confuse other radar systems. These capabilities make AWACS the U.S. Air Force's key asset for command, control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Going Strong For 25 Years AWACS was first fielded 25 years ago, in March 1977. MITRE, in its contract with the USAF Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, is the AWACS systems engineer, and has been a key part of the AWACS program from the start. MITRE works on the technology upgrades that, over the years, kept AWACS as the mainstay command and control platform for the USAF. NATO also uses it, as well as the United Kingdom, France, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Japan (in the 767 airframe version). AWACS has proven itself in allied operations from the Gulf War, through the conflicts in the Balkans, to the present conflict in Afghanistan. In the Gulf War, E-3 Sentry aircraft were among the first to be deployed during Operation Desert Shield, where they immediately established an around-the-clock radar screen to defend against Iraqi aggression. During Desert Storm, E-3s flew more than 400 missions and logged more than 5,000 hours of on-station time. They provided radar surveillance and control to more than 120,000 coalition sorties. In addition to providing senior leadership with time-critical information on the actions of enemy forces, E-3 controllers assisted in 38 of the 40 air-to-air kills recorded during the conflict. Because of the E-3's AWACS data collection capability, an entire air war was recorded for the first time in the history of aerial warfare. The AWACS has also been key to homeland defense operations. For the first time, NATO AWACS aircraft were deployed to the continental United States to aid in homeland defense operations so that U.S. Air Force AWACS could be used elsewhere in the world. Systems Engineering MITRE systems and specialty engineers contributed to the various subsystems such as the hallmark saucer-shaped rotating antenna radome, or rotodome. The rotodome is 30 feet in diameter, 6 feet thick, and is held 11 feet above the fuselage by two struts. Inside the housing are the antennas of the powerful S-band surveillance radar and the L-band Identification Friend or Foe Interrogator radar. The rotodome's success is owed in part to the MITRE engineers who conducted design studies and experiments to optimize the materials and construction for a "transparent window." The window allows the radar's radio frequency energy to travel through without reflections that would degrade the radar system's performance. MITRE systems engineering expertise helped define, specify, and assess upgrades to AWACS through the years. These upgrades cover all subsystems in the areas of human computer interface, mission computing, communications, navigation, and sensors/surveillance. In addition to conducting threat analysis, requirement definition/ specification, and design evaluation and assessment, we also participate in the laboratory, ground, and flight testing phases of the upgrade programs. During the AWACS Electronic Support Measures (ESM) upgrade, our engineers played key roles in redesigning the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system to meet AWACS operational requirements. Engineers also evaluated the critical system electro-magnetic interference/electro-magnetic compatibility (EMI/EMC) issues. Based on its EMI/EMC systems engineering and integration experience, MITRE subsequently helped the AWACS prime contractor design a prototype for a replacement ESM antenna and radio frequency receiver. Our radar engineers were behind the Radar System Improvement Program, in which the radar system's detection sensitivity was improved by a factor of 10. It was MITRE's design concepts in radar signal and data processing that were the basis for the detection sensitivity improvement. These improvements were well proven in USAF and NATO AWACS operations in the Balkans and in Kosovo. "AWACS has become the only critical go, no-go platform in the fight," said Major General Gary A. Voellger, a previous NATO Airborne Early Warning Force commander. "Pilots don't like to fly without AWACS." Improving AWACS In addition to engineering and technical contributions, MITRE's Economic Decision and Analysis Center personnel, along with MITRE project staff, conducted extensive and exhaustive data analysis of reliability, maintainability, availability, and sustainment data in support of the AWACS Extend Sentry Program. The Extend Sentry Program comprised over 100 separate projects to increase AWACS availability and correct mission deficiencies. MITRE was the technical lead on most of the projects, and led the definition of the architecture for new guidance, computer/displays, identification friend or foe, and satellite communications projects. Our systems engineering and analysis experts are also continuing to define and assess mission system improvements to support the Time Critical Target goals of the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense. A Time Critical Target is a target of short duration, such as an enemy missile ready to be launched, which must be attacked when it is first observed. Systems engineers are also supporting Network Centric Collaborative Targeting capabilities, which involve a network of operational intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors to improve detection, identification and location of time critical targets. One of the most recent MITRE contributions was proposing the migration of the AWACS militarized, monolithic, centralized 1970s computer technology to a distributed, real-time, COTS open computing system architecture. We formulated the idea and conducted government sponsored research to prove the concept. The AWACS System Program Office and the contractor were convinced of the merits of this technology, some of which will be incorporated into the Block 40/45 AWACS program. MITRE AWACS systems and specialty engineers are exporting the valuable lessons they have learned to the emerging Multisensor Command and Control Aircraft, which in the future will be used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—eventually replacing AWACS, Joint STARS, and other platforms. The new system will benefit from MITRE's hundreds of staff-years experience in defining the Airborne Moving Target Indication systems, which discriminate airborne targets by their motion. Meanwhile, MITRE continues to play an integral role in the AWACS program. The Air Force routinely uses all of our experience to maintain AWACS as the world's supreme airborne surveillance capability. As AWACS continues to evolve until its retirement, MITRE will be there with its system engineering support. —by David Van Cleave Related Information Articles and News Websites
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