More on ITT's sensors for EA-18G Growler, EA-6 Prowler and the F-16s. Interesting that at the time, Pakistan was the ONLY customer to have ordered the ALQ-211 (V9) version along with V4 one. Good read over all.....
ITT Corp. foresees double-digit annual growth of its Electronic Systems group, helped by the recent addition of the former EDO Corp. The market for electronic warfare (EW) systems is seen as a major driver of that growth.
The acquisition of EDO, valued at $1.7 billion, was concluded last December. It represented ITT’s largest acquisition since ITT Industries (now Corp.) was formed as an independent company in 1995. It also made ITT a top-10 U.S. defense contractor in terms of revenue. The company’s Defense Electronics & Services business, based in McLean, Va., generated $4.2 billion in 2007; it is expected to finish at $6.1 billion this year.
EDO, a multi-faceted manufacturer of electronic subassemblies for military and space applications, advanced composite structures, sonar systems and test equipment, came with an 80-year legacy and positions on a range of strike, EW and surveillance aircraft. ITT bought EDO not to absorb it, company officials say, but to expand ITT’s own offerings.
"ITT went ahead with this purchase with the idea that it was going to be a true merger/integration," said Christopher M. Carlson, director of U.S. business development for ITT Electronic Systems. "We were not looking to buy and consolidate. We saw in EDO, what they were doing, a lot of complimentary technologies and markets."
In an interview during the Farnborough Airshow in July, Carlson made the case that EDO and ITT combined are more capable than the sum of their parts. The expectation going forward, he said, is ITT’s $1.29 billion Electronic Systems group will grow by 10 percent annually.
One springboard for the merged company is the new EA-18G Growler, the U.S. Navy’s replacement for the 40-year-old EA-6B Prowler EW aircraft. EDO’s Defense Systems unit in North Amityville, N.Y., supplied components of the AN/ALQ-99 jamming system of the EA-6B, which is comprised of receivers and antennas in the aircraft’s tail cap and exciters, which optimize jamming signals, and transmitters contained in pods under the wings and fuselage. The Universal Exciter Upgrade extended the system’s frequency coverage and incorporated advanced jamming techniques and modulations.
Like the EA-6B, the Growler is fitted with ALQ-99 transmitter pods as well as an Interference Cancellation System (INCANS) from the former EDO facility at Thousand Oaks, Calif., now part of the ITT family.
"With us picking up Amityville, one of the major markets going forward is the electronic attack market," Carlson said. "The current Navy system supporting both the Navy and the Air Force — the EA-6B — is being phased out in favor of the [EA-18G]. The Air Force doesn’t have a replacement for it, so both the Navy and the Air Force are looking at new equipment. For the EW world, that’s going to be one of the major markets, at least domestically in the U.S., in the next decade."
The Navy is planning a next-generation jammer for the EA-18. Meanwhile, the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded contracts to companies including ITT to mature technology for an EW pod that would be flown on the B-52 bomber, replacing the cancelled Stand-Off Jammer System for that aircraft. ITT has contracts to develop exciter and phased-array jamming technologies at lower frequencies.
With the former EDO’s contribution, ITT is better positioned to offer an EW system solution, Carlson said.
"The old EDO group already had a position on the EA-6B with their Universal Exciter," Carlson said. "ITT in Clifton (N.J.) had been working on the... transmit side, with a number of contracts from the Air Force to develop new phased-array technology. Now, we find with the merger, that we have the complete story. We’ve got the waveform generation with the exciter coming out of (Amityville); we have the new-technology transmitters and beam formers coming out of New Jersey. You put the two together [and] ITT has a complete system."
Forecast International estimates $23 billion will be spent on development and production of major EW programs over the next 10 years — driven by the need to counter improvised explosive devices, to adapt airborne EW systems and potentially to protect civilian airliners from missiles. Frost & Sullivan has pegged the U.S. market for EW programs at $1.25 billion in 2008, growing to $1.31 billion in 2013. The market leaders across reports include Northrop Grumman, ITT, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Thales.
One technology that Carlson does not see as raining on this parade is the use of Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar for electronic attack. That application is being studied by, among others, Northrop Grumman, which supplies AESA radars for the F-22 and F-35 multirole fifth-generation fighters.
"The problem, or the issue, in electronic attack is you want to attack the radars that span the entire frequency range," Carlson said. "When people talk about using the AESA radar as also an electronic attack device — of the whole range, that covers a small [amount]. Although the radars that they’re putting in the modern airplanes are broader bandwidth than a generation ago, instead of a tiny sliver of the frequency range, they’ve now got a small niche of it."
ITT at Farnborough had other developments to report — the first international sale of its ALQ-214 Integrated Defensive Electronics Countermeasures system as part of Australia’s procurement of 24 F/A-18E/F fighters; and Turkey’s selection of the ALQ-211(V) 4 EW suite for new F-16s, joining Pakistan, Poland, Chile and Oman. Pakistan also was expected to order the (V) 9 podded version of the system to equip older F-16s under a Foreign Military Sale. The company’s ALQ-211 (V) 2 for the U.S. Air Force CV-22 tiltrotor and (V) 6 for the U.S. Army Special Operations MH-47E Chinook have entered full-rate production.
"This is the fourth or fifth good year we’ve had in a row," Carlson said. "We feel good, with the 211 and 214 in full-rate production, new technology with electronic attack and new capabilities [such as] test equipment in California, through the EDO purchase. The new group in (Amityville) is heavily involved in the electronic attack market and is going to enhance our position in the market." — Bill Carey
Avionics Magazine :: Industry Scan
F-16 CD? The new fighter?
