JSTARS' struggles: With no replacement in sight, aging radar planes feel the strain

摘要

Pushing the U.S. Air Force's E-8C radar planes to fly until some of them are more than 60 years old will be even harder than it sounds. That's the message the planes' contractor wants Air Force leaders to hear, now that the service has declared it can't afford to replace the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft. Executives from prime contractor Northrop Grumman describe a JSTARS fleet that's hampered by old Pratt & Whitney engines, cumbersome 56 kilobits-per-second datalinks, and no clear plan to keep them flying or replace them with something else. The plane's Air Force operators are concerned also about the fleet's avionics. If the Air Force has an adequate sustainment plan, Northrop hasn't seen it. "These things aren't in the current budget right now, even in '13 or what we're hearing about '14," said Steve Bond, Northrop's director of business development for JSTARS.