The KC-135 was used to increase tactical communications throughout joint and mixed forces for contested, multi-domain operations, and is now testing the Excessive Worth Airborne Asset Pod.
The Air Nationwide Guard Air Power Reserve Command Check Heart (AATC) has simply disclosed that its KC-135 Check Detachment, working alongside the Utah Air Nationwide Guard’s 151st Wing, examined superior connectivity programs aboard a KC-135 in the course of the current Resolute Power Pacific 25 (REFORPAC 25) train in July. These programs allowed to increase tactical communications throughout joint and mixed forces, demonstrating “how warfighter-driven innovation can remodel the confirmed KC-135 Stratotanker right into a next-generation asset prepared for contested, multi-domain operations.”
REFORPAC 25 was a big train targeted on the brand new challenges which might be confronted in future eventualities by the U.S. navy, a part of the Division of the Air Power’s broader Division-Stage Train sequence. REFORPAC tasked models throughout the Indo-Pacific to quickly disperse, function, and combine throughout hundreds of miles, making use of the Agile Fight Employment idea.
“For AATC, the train provided a great surroundings to push new applied sciences below real-world stressors and display how fast modernization strengthens America’s capability to reply within the Pacific,” defined the press launch. The getting old KC-135 Stratotanker has been eyed to be used as a communication and information relay node because it adapts for future eventualities.
REFORPAC’s Testing
The press launch detailed the actions of the AATC’s KC-135 Check Detachment throughout REFORPAC 25, noting that they constructed on earlier demonstration. Whereas not talked about, this might additionally refer to check performed so far as 2020 whereas the Air Power was growing the Superior Battle Administration System (ABMS).
The ABMS was a cloud-based information sharing community to attach U.S. forces throughout Multi-Area Operations (MDO) throughout land, sea, house, and our on-line world, permitting a joint drive to make use of cutting-edge strategies and applied sciences to quickly gather, analyze, share data and make choices in actual time in future battlefields characterised by data saturation. As a part of the checks, a KC-46 Pegasus tanker was used to determine a communications pathway and was deliberate, alongside the KC-135, to obtain a brand new pod to relay information and translate them within the native language of the F-22 Raptor’s Intra-Flight Knowledge Hyperlink (IFDL) and F-35 Lightning II’s Multifunction Superior Knowledge Hyperlink (MADL).
AATC mentioned it evaluated a functionality referred to as the Datalink Enhancement–Minimal Viable Product (DE-MVP), designed to fuse information from three Line-of-Sight (LOS) Tactical Knowledge Hyperlink networks and a number of Past Line-of-Sight (BLOS) connections. Utilizing Superior Clever Gateway know-how aboard the KC-135, the system linked joint and coalition mission companions in actual time, tightening choice timelines and lengthening sensing and focusing on data throughout the battlespace.
Notably, the service mentioned this allowed to cut back conventional decision-making cycles “from hours to minutes,” explaining that “typical intelligence processes usually comply with a 72-hour battle rhythm from assortment to motion,” whereas the KC-135 demonstrated “the power to condense that cycle to near-real time.”
“The air refueling enterprise is in a novel place to leverage theater-wide mass at any given second to attach strategic data with the ahead tactical edge, expediting sensor-to-shooter information passage and tightening a world kill internet,” mentioned Lt. Col. Spencer Liedl, AATC KC-135 operational check director.
This functionality is taken into account particularly necessary for mission execution throughout contested environments, as the improved programs can present real-time situational consciousness by way of shifting map shows whereas sharing them over the community. “This shift permits tanker crews to make well timed, impartial tactical choices in contested and degraded environments, turning a historically support-focused plane into an energetic node within the command-and-control ecosystem,” mentioned the service.
HVAA Pod
Within the press launch, the service defined that the AATC can be growing the Excessive Worth Airborne Asset (HVAA) Pod at Roland R. Wright Air Nationwide Guard Base in Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah. The pod is geared toward offering self-protection capabilities to the KC-135 when working in high-threat areas, and is described as “a major leap from easy consciousness to survivability, making certain tankers can proceed enabling operations even in environments the place menace envelopes are increasing.”
This isn’t the primary time the HVAA pod comes round. In reality, the service beforehand disclosed within the Modernization chapter of the 2021 Nationwide Guard 12 months in Evaluation that the ANG was collaborating with the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory and Georgia Tech Analysis Institute to construct the HVAA pod.
On that event, the service mentioned the pod would “present real-time menace information to mobility aircrew, starting with the KC-135, and ship extra capability for future growth of kinetic and non-kinetic defensive programs.” The HVAA pod was additionally beforehand referred to as the Gladiator Pod, and described as a communications, sensors and defensive pod.
The place to begin was the shell of a Multipoint Refueling System (MPRS) pod, already employed by the KC-135 for hose-and-drogue refueling from the wingtips, which AATC supposed to pack with communication, defensive, and sensor applied sciences on an open-architecture. Particularly, AATC mentioned it deliberate on equipping the pod with the required sensors able to detecting, figuring out, monitoring, and defending as a knowledge node inside ABMS.
Among the many notable modifications of the pod, in comparison with the unique MPRS, are the presence of a RAM air inlet and a number of antenna mounts. The HVAA pod was additionally recognized in simulations as among the best Mixed Joint All-Area Command and Management + Defensive Digital Warfare (CJADC2+) choices to improve the Mobility Air Forces and enhance their survivability, lethality a capability to help all mission units.
