Boeing, US Navy Flight Testing Distributed Targeting System for Super Hornet

CHINA LAKE, Calif. – The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny [NYSE: BA] and the U.S. Navy’s Air Test and Eval­u­a­tion Squadron VX-31 have begun flight test­ing a Dis­trib­uted Tar­get­ing Sys­tem for the F/A‑18E/F Super Hor­net strike fight­er at the Naval Air War­fare Cen­ter Weapons Divi­sion Advanced Weapons Lab in Chi­na Lake. The cur­rent test phase is sched­uled to con­clude in Novem­ber 2011.

The Dis­trib­uted Tar­get­ing Sys­tem uses onboard hard­ware and soft­ware pro­cess­ing to pro­duce pre­cise tar­get­ing solu­tions for Super Hor­net air­crews. This enhanced tar­get­ing capa­bil­i­ty is part of the Navy’s F/A‑18E/F Net­work Cen­tric War­fare Upgrades pro­gram as well as the F/A‑18E/F Flight Plan, which ensures that the Super Hor­net remains ahead of known and emerg­ing threats through­out the com­ing decades. 

“Dis­trib­uted Tar­get­ing will con­tin­ue to expand the Super Hornet’s already advanced mul­ti­role capa­bil­i­ty for the warfight­er,” said Kory Math­ews, F/A‑18 and EA-18 Pro­grams vice pres­i­dent for Boe­ing. “Dis­trib­uted Tar­get­ing is a pow­er­ful tool that will pro­vide Super Hor­net air­crews with high­ly pre­cise tar­get­ing capa­bil­i­ty when iden­ti­fy­ing and engag­ing ground tar­get sets. This is anoth­er phase of our evo­lu­tion­ary approach to con­tin­u­ous capa­bil­i­ty enhance­ment for the Navy’s com­bat-proven Super Hornet.” 

Suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the flight tests will enable the tar­get­ing sys­tem to tran­si­tion to oper­a­tional test­ing in late 2011. The capa­bil­i­ty is expect­ed to become oper­a­tional in F/A‑18E/F air­craft in 2012. 

The Boe­ing Super Hor­net is a mul­ti­role air­craft, able to per­form vir­tu­al­ly every mis­sion in the tac­ti­cal spec­trum, includ­ing air supe­ri­or­i­ty, day/night strike with pre­ci­sion-guid­ed weapons, fight­er escort, close air sup­port, sup­pres­sion of ene­my air defens­es, mar­itime strike, recon­nais­sance, for­ward air con­trol and tanker mis­sions. Boe­ing has deliv­ered more than 430 F/A‑18E/Fs to the U.S. Navy. Every Super Hor­net pro­duced has been deliv­ered on or ahead of sched­ule and on budget. 

A unit of The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is one of the world’s largest defense, space and secu­ri­ty busi­ness­es spe­cial­iz­ing in inno­v­a­tive and capa­bil­i­ties-dri­ven cus­tomer solu­tions, and the world’s largest and most ver­sa­tile man­u­fac­tur­er of mil­i­tary air­craft. Head­quar­tered in St. Louis, Boe­ing Defense, Space & Secu­ri­ty is a $34 bil­lion busi­ness with 68,000 employ­ees worldwide. 

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Con­tact:
Philip Carder
F/A‑18 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
314–234-6516
philip.b.carder@boeing.com

Source:
Boe­ing Company 

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