PMA209 2012 Core Avionics Master Plan - NAVAIR - U.S. Navy

Core Avionics Master Plan 2012 Appendix A-6PMA-272 also collaborates with numerous other DoD and Service-specific entities,including the Joint Electronics Advanced Technology (JEAT), Naval Aviation Center forRotary Wing Advancement (NACRA), Joint Aircraft Survivability Program Office(JASPO), all Service laboratories (DARPA, NRL, AFRL and ARL), and other Service'sscience and technology development organizations such as Army Intelligence,Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) to achieve that goal.Requirements.Mission sensor and countermeasure avionics that provide Electronic Warfare (EW)self-protection capabilities are mission enablers in Joint Functional Concepts such asBattlespace Awareness, Force Application, and Force Protection. These joint conceptsflow into the naval capabilities of Sea Strike and Sea Shield outlined in Sea Power 21.Top-level EW requirements for Airborne Electronic Attack and Counter Air/Counter AirDefense are presented in an EW Initial Capabilities Documents (ICD).PMA-272 program office manages the aircraft survivability equipment (ASE) portfolioin accordance with the budgetary process, urgent needs statement requirements fromcustomer groups, Fleet Forces Command and other directives for ASE. Themaintenance of a constant open channel of communication between PMA-272 andNAVAIR, USMC Aviation P and its customer base through the Commander, Naval AirForces’ (CNAF) Naval Aviation Readiness Group (NARG) provides a process to receivefleet input for electronic warfare, in general, and self-protection, in specific.A. Dispensed Countermeasures.1. Current Capabilities.The AN/ALE-39 Counter Measure Dispenser System (CMDS) is a legacy systemcapable of dispensing chaff, flare and/or other expendables. This aging system is beingreplaced with the AN/ALE-47 system.The AN/ALE-47, the current generation CMDS, protects host aircraft in a multi-threatenvironment and provides expendable countermeasure dispensing capability throughthe use of programmable dispense programs and parameters through a MemoryLoader/Verifier Set (MLVS) over a MIL-STD-1553 type data bus. It is capable of fullintegration with the defensive avionics suite of the host aircraft for automatic threatadaptivedispensing of expendable countermeasures based on a loadable mission datafile. It can be operated independent of any other avionics system in a manual mode fordirect pilot control in the event of interfacing equipment failure, non-availability ormission requirements. The AN/ALE-47 has four operational modes to dispenseexpendables: manual, bypass, semi-automatic, and automatic. In the automatic andsemi-automatic modes, the AN/ALE-47 receives threat information from the threatsensors and uses the data to calculate dispense program parameters using a “cocktail”of expendables to implement against specific threat(s). The AN/ALE-47 also has up tosix manual dispense programs that the pilot/aircrew can release. The CMDS providesthe aircraft with an expendable countermeasures capability against RF, IR, and EOthreats from Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA), Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs), Air-to-AirMissiles (AAMs), and Airborne Interceptors (AIs). The CMDS design is programmablethat will allow the system to counter future threats when deployed through mission datafile modification, which increases capability with newly developed expendables anddispensing sequences (a.k.a. cocktails) that will meet the threat.A-6 Self Protection 3