NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Executives with L3Harris Technologies said the corporate will hit a development milestone for its Viper Shield electronic warfare package this month, with production on course for 2025.
L3Harris is constructing Viper Shield, a group of digital protections and countermeasures, for fitting aboard Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70/72 jets sold to foreign militaries. Greater than a dozen countries planned to fly the variants when the corporate was first tapped for the work.
The soon-to-come milestone, generally known as “drop 3,” signifies initial radar warning receiver capability, meaning the system can detect emissions of adversarial radar.
“Winning in the subsequent fight isn’t nearly what you possibly can do platform by platform. It’s with the ability to harness all of that data that’s on the market, and with the ability to try this in real time, or near-real time,” Jen Lewis, president for advanced combat systems at L3Harris, told C4ISRNET on the sidelines of the Association of Old Crows conference in Maryland. The corporate this yr said Viper Shield passed a separate review involving Lockheed and the Air Force.
“I feel we’re really ahead of the sector here, by way of eager about the way you get after the electromagnetic spectrum operations and data problem,” Lewis added.
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Aircraft must navigate environments teeming with radars, missiles and other threats. Penetrating — or slipping past — those defenses is critical. Each Russia and China have constructed anti-access and area-denial infrastructure to maintain at bay forces and weapons that would otherwise overwhelm.
The U.S. Department of Defense is prioritizing sophisticated EW tools because it moves away from smaller counterinsurgency fighting within the Greater Middle East and prepares for larger-scale, higher-tech battles envisioned for the long run.
“Democratization of technology has enabled adversaries to develop things slightly quickly. We’ve been comfortable, as a nation, with having superiority in that domain. But, again, along with your playbook on display, folks get smarter about the best way to counter it,” Paul DeLia, a director of strategy development at L3Harris, said. “I’m very pleased to see a reinvigoration of electronic warfare. It’s a essential bullet, in the event you would, within the gun to be able to achieve success in the subsequent conflict.”
L3Harris is the ninth largest contractor on the planet when ranked by defense-related revenue, in response to Defense News Top 100 evaluation. The corporate earned nearly $14 billion in 2022.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a every day newspaper in South Carolina. Colin can be an award-winning photographer.