F-16 makes in-flight software updates to EW system as proof of concept for much larger networking effort

Here’s Mike Benitez on the Aerospace Advantage podcast discussing in-flight updates to the ALQ-213 electromagnetic warfare system, which requires some programming to detect enemy radar signatures:

The mission data file is essentially a lookup table of threat parametrics. If you think of it as an Excel sheet with a bunch of data in blocks. That’s a key point people need to remember. The entire paradigm is reactive. What I mean by that is to build that file, the threat parametrics have to be known, analyzed, and characterized. After that, the file has to be built in one of our labs. Then emailed from the lab to a maintenance unit for that particular squadron. Then it has to be downloaded and installed onto a loading device. Then an individual has to take that device and connect it to each individual aircraft on the flight line so that the next time the jet flies it can use it. Anytime a new signal is detected it has to go through that entire process.

 

The big story is that we used the mission data file as a test because it is an easy way to show the value of what we did. Our test was really software and networks — Seeing if we could build a highway to connect the data lab to all airborne F-16s anywhere in the world, send them a file, and reprogram onboard an operational system. And we did it. While the lab was at Hill Air Force Base, the aircraft was flying at Nellis 400 miles apart. The data traveled over 40,000 miles because we bounced it off a satellite in GEO.

 

What I want is to foot stomp that this demonstration proved a concept and so we’re trying to hack the systems together to connect the warfighter. Think long-range kill chains. Getting airborne crypto updates. Maintaining custody of weapons-quality tracks, and anything you can think of. Unfortunately there’s no holistic approach to better integrate software networks across the portfolios of weapon systems we have, and that’s because no one is in charge of doing it.

There’s more from Mike about this in his recent The Merge newsletter. I blogged on this topic last year as the Air Force was thinking about the challenges of deploying container updates in an environment disconnected from the internet. In this test, the container had software updates for an EW system onboard an F-16. But in principle, the process works for containers related to any mission system and they can run exactly the same on any platform.