Armada’s monthly round-up of all the latest electronic warfare news in the product, programme and operational domains.
Calling all speakers!
The Royal Air Force Museum has announced its call for speakers for its 2024 lecture series. The museum is planning a series of lectures, covering the whole gamut of air power, to take place throughout the year. The lectures will be held online and throughout the United Kingdom. The museum has sites in London, Wolverhampton in the West Midlands and Lancaster in the north of England. Proposals for lectures are sought from postgraduate students, early-career and established researchers. The objective of the lectures is to share new research being undertaken in air power, aviation history and histories of air forces. This includes the Royal Air Force’s, and air power’s, use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Proposals in diverse, related fields and their relationship to the RAF and air power will also be considered. These fields can include, but are not restricted to, archaeology, law and ethics, museology, international relations and strategic studies. Papers relating to the future direction of air and space power are particularly welcome. The lectures enable those interested in these fields share knowledge and highlight interdisciplinary approaches and research methods. Those interested in responding to this call for papers should send a 300-word abstract outlining their idea along with a 200-word biography, both of which should be written in English. Abstracts and biographies should be sent to Dr. Megan Kelleher, the RAF Museum’s historian and academic access manager, at [email protected]. The deadline for abstract and biography submissions is 1st March.
Two Into One
On 19th December, Raytheon announced it had won a contract worth $80 million to produce a prototype Advanced Electronic Warfare (ADVEW) system. ADVEW will equip the United States Navy’s Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet combat aircraft. The new EW system replaces two existing capabilities; L3Harris’ AN/ALQ-214 integrated countermeasures system and Raytheon’s AN/ALR-63(V)3 radar warning receiver. According to a press release announcing the news, ADVEW will consolidate the attributes of these two systems into a single architecture. At the same time, Raytheon says ADVEW will deliver improvements in performance vis-à-vis these legacy systems. The press release continued that ADVEW prototypes will be developed, tested and reviewed over a 36-month period. Raytheon told Armada in a written statement that ADVEW “will deliver a generational refresh to the (aircraft’s) electronic warfare capability.” The statement added that the company “continues to work closely with the government’s F/A-18E/F programme office to ensure we’re prepared to deliver the needed electronic warfare enhancements, on time and within budget, to the backbone of the US Navy’s carrier air wing.” The company declined to provide details of the initial and full operational capability dates for ADVEW. Raytheon also declined to say how many of the existing F/A-18E/F fleet would receive the new system referring these inquiries to the US Navy.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
