EQ-4 Global Hawk modified to carry the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN)
WASHINGTON: Northrop Grumman’s new IDIQ contract, worth up to $3.6 billion, to support the Air Force’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) E-11A and EQ-4B aircraft guarantees operations through 2026. While the Air Force is already moving to field new capabilities developed under the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) to replace BACN, the award suggests that this won’t be completed until 2027 at the earliest.
BACN is a gateway and relay system that allows tactical communications beyond line-of-sight and in areas where satellite communications are blocked or unreliable, such as in mountainous areas. The system, which first flew in 2005, also ‘translates’ between different radio frequencies, allowing the linkage of incompatible platforms and radios. Air Combat Command (ACC) currently operates three E-11As, variants of the Bombardier Global Express business jet (a fourth one crashed last January in Afghanistan killing the pilot and co-pilot), and four EQ-4B modified Global Hawk drones, according to ACC.
The Air Force recommended retiring all three EQ-4Bs in its 2021 budget request, but buying another E-11A — with planes to increase the total E-11A fleet to eight by 2026. (The three operational E-11As are all deployed with the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.)
The Air Force’s plan is to replace the EQ-4B with ABMS’s gatewayONE, which is a modern software system than can translate machine code between incompatible platforms, such as the F-22 and the F-35 fighter jets. GatewayONE is now slated for deployment on air mobility aircraft, with the most likely being Boeing’s troubled KC-46 tanker.
The 2021 NDAA included a stern warning to the Air Force:
The conferees remain concerned regarding the potential decrease in airborne network communications capacity and capability resulting from the Air Force decision to divest EQ-4B platforms, and the impacts this could have on the geographical combatant commands, specifically U.S. Central Command. Therefore, the conferees expect the Secretary of the Air Force, in coordination with the associated U.S. air component commanders for each relevant geographical combatant command areas of responsibility, to provide equal or greater capability and capacity for battlefield airborne communications and networking, noting the Secretary’s planned inventory quantity increases of manned E-11 aircraft systems that was similarly provided by both the unmanned EQ-4B and the E-11A aircraft systems combined.
Congressional appropriators went along with the Air Force’s plan in the 2021 defense spending bill signed into law Dec. 27.
This new BACN contract covers “research, development, test, and evaluation, integration and operations and sustainment for existing and future payloads contained in or connected to the BACN system. It also includes associated ground stations or controls, ancillary equipment, support equipment and system integration laboratories,” according to today’s Northrop’s press release.
The company’s previous BACN support contract, awarded last January, was for $217 million for work through Jan. 23.
Millennium Space Systems is delivering on critical missile tracking constellation
With programs like MTC, Millennium Space Systems is redefining what it means to be an operational prime – rapidly delivering operational small sat constellations on rapid timelines.
Army leader dismisses House proposal for drone branch creation
“Operating and defending against the drone threat is something that will be experienced by, you know, all formations at multiple echelons,” said Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo.
