Air Force Devel-ops Threat Data Base for F-35

18 June 2014 Kris Osborn

Joint Strike Fighter officials are de-veloping a mission data system that can immediately tell pilots if they are flying against a MiG-29 or Su-27 or any other enemy fighter.

The system will serve as a com-puter library or data base of known threats and friendly aircraft in spe-cific regions of the world, said Thom-as Lawhead, operations lead for the JSF integration office.

The mission data packages, now being developed by the Air Force’s 53rd Wing are designed to accom-modate new information as new threat data becomes available. The data base is loaded with a wide range of information to include com-mercial airliner information and spe-cifics on Russian and Chinese fight-er jets.

Without the mission data files and computer-driven sensor fusion

of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, fight-er pilots would have to simultane-ously interpret and organize input from a range of different sensors in-cluding their radar warning receiver, Lawhead explained.

“You can think of the mission data as the memory that feeds the fusion engine to identify threats. It is the data which tells the aircraft whether something is a good guy or a bad guy,” said Col. Carl Schaefer, the Air Force’s top JSF integration official.

“A sensor receives input. Then, the aircraft’s fusion engine takes that input and fuses it with other input from other sensors. It then takes that information and balances it against the mission data. Based on that match it can tell you what the threat is,” he explained.

Sensors on the F-35 include the Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar as well as a system called Distributed Aperture System, or DAS, which combines input from as many as six different electro-opti-cal cameras on the aircraft.

The aircraft also draws upon a

technology called Electro-optical Tar-geting System, or EOTS, which helps identify and pinpoint targets. EOTS, which does both air-to-air and air-to-ground targeting, is able to combine forward-looking infrared and infrared search and track technology.

Overall, information from all of the JSF sensors is “fused” through the aircraft’s computer, provid-ing the pilot with clear, integrated information.

The Air Force is developing 12 different mission data files for 12 dif-ferent geographic areas, Lawhead ex-plained. The first four are slated to be ready by the time the service reach-es its planned initial operating capa-bility with the F-35A in August 2016.

“One of the ways we respond to emerging threats is through the mis-sion data files. If we are going to a region of the world, we want to be able to understand what the threats are and make sure that all the data that we have on the bad guys of that area is fed into the mission data file,” Schaefer added.

http://defensetech.org/2014/06/18/air-force-develops-threat-data-base-for-f-35/

Dave Majumdar Nov

Foreign air forces ordering the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) will be able to

customize the mission data packages loaded onto their aircraft in a compromise that defense officials say both preserves U.S. security and allows allies a greater degree of customization of their fighters.

Loading specific mission data packages onto the stealth fighter had been a bone of contention amongst the partner nations helping to develop the F-35.

The Pentagon — which is paying for the lion’s share of the roughly $50 billion F-35 development program — has a strict policy of never sharing the source codes for any U.S. weapons system even with America’s closest allies.

However, U.S. allies who are paying billions to buy the F-35 need to modify the jet for their particular needs have agitated for the right to alter the data packages their planes.

Foreign F-35 Partners Allowed More Freedom to Customize Fighter Software

The data packages hold crucial terrain and enemy threat information for a particular region. For example, an F-35 assigned to operate in the Middle East might have its computers loaded with terrain data for Iran and detailed information to identify Iranian radars, surface-to-air missiles and fighter aircraft.

The aircraft would also be loaded with data on friendly forces in the region—basically

everything the F-35 pilot would need to have full awareness of the battle space.

Speaking to reporters last week, JSF program manager U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan

said that a compromise solution had been reached.

“In the future we will have many labs where our partners are going to do some of their own work,” Bogdan said.

The U.S. Navy, too, will operate a mission data lab at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, Calif.

Now, the Air Force’s Air Combat Command reprogramming lab at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., creates all of the F-35 mission data packages.

That problem might contribute to any delay in the U.S. Marine Corps’ goal to declare the F-35B jump jet variant operational in July 2015.

The Marine Corps requires coverage of two different areas of the world for its initial operational capability (IOC) in 2015, Bogdan said. However, he would not say which two regions—but the mostly likely candidates are the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. One of the Marines’ first operational locations is Iwakuni in Japan.

Not specifying the region, Bogdan said it would not be a problem getting one of those data packages ready by July, 2015, but the second package could be an issue.

The same engineers are working on both of the required regions and those technicians simply do not have enough capacity to do packages simultaneously.

“There is some schedule pressure on getting that second mission data package done by July of 2015,” Bogdan said.

Building additional reprogramming labs will help to alleviate pressure on the Air Force lab. The Navy lab at Point Mugu, for example, will build data files for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, Bogdan said.

Partner nations will also be building facilities to reprogram their F-35s in the United States, Bogdan said. However, foreign nations will not have unsupervised access to the F-35 and its critical mission systems. “They will put people in those labs, we will put people in those labs,” Bogdan said.

“We together—jointly—will build there the brains of the airplane for them.”

However, each partner nation will be able to customize their own aircraft for their particular regions and the specific threats they will face.

“They go to different places and they fight in different ways,” Bogdan said.

“So we have a throughput problem,” Bogdan said.

A-10’s Delayed Retire-ment Threatens to Push Back F-35 Program —[MISSION SYSTEMS]

31 Oct 2014 Kris Osborn“...Another potential hurdle to meet-ing IOC for the Marine Corps and Air Force on time is the need to complete what’s called the mission data files for the F-35, Bogdan explained.

Described as the brains of the airplane, the mission data files are extensive on-board data sys-tems compiling information on geography, air space and poten-tial threats in known areas of the world where the F-35 might be expected to perform combat op-erations, Bogdan explained.

Consisting of hardware and soft-ware, the mission data files are a data base of known threats and friendly aircraft in specific parts the world. The files are being worked on at a reprogramming laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Bodgan said.

“The mission data files contain all sorts of information that the airplane

needs to make sense of the bat-tlespace that it is flying in. Finish-ing this is a threat to IOC because we only have one factory up and running and they are trying to service all the airplanes,” Bogdan added.

The mission data packages are loaded with a wide range of infor-mation to include commercial air-liner information and specifics on Russian and Chinese fighter jets. For example, the mission data sys-tem would enable a pilot to quickly identify a Russian MiG-29 if it were detected by the F-35’s sensors.

The data files are being engineered to accommodate new threat and intel-ligence information as it emerges. For instance, the system will be updated with details on the Chinese J-20 fight-er or the Russian T-50 PAK FA fighter.

“The Marine Corps requires mission data files for two different areas of the world to be ready for IOC. There is no problem with the first one, but there is schedule pressure on get-ting that mission data file done for the second area,” Bogdan said.

Overall, the Air Force is devel-oping 12 different mission data files for 12 different geographic

areas, Air Force officials said. The first four are slated to be ready by the time the service reaches its planned initial operating capability with the F-35A in August of 2016. However, en-gine delays and schedule setbacks will make this difficult.

The F-35’s software packages are being developed in increments. The Marine Corps plans to declare IOC with a software increment or Block 2B. It builds upon the enhanced simulat-ed weapons, data link capabilities and early fused sensor integration of the earlier Block 2A software drop.

The next increments Block 3I and Block 3F will increase the combat ca-pability even further and increase the aircraft’s ability to suppress enemy air defenses.

The Air Force plans IOC with soft-ware block 3I in 2016. Full operation-al capability will come with Block 3F, service officials said. Block 3F will in-crease the weapons delivery capaci-ty of the JSF as well, giving it the abil-ity to drop a Small Diameter Bomb, 500-pound JDAM and AIM 9X short-range air to air missile, Air Force offi-cials said.”http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/10/31/a-10s-delayed-

retirement-threatens-to-push-back-f-35-program/

1

Eglin getting two new F-35 labsEglin’s $300 million reprogramming lab provides the F-35 with mission data to give it combat smarts, and now two more multimillion-dollar labs will be built at the base to customize data for F-35 partner nations.

07 Apr 2015 David TortoranoWhen the United States Reprogramm ing Laboratory was established here nearly five years ago, the then-squadron commander made it clear why the lab was important to the F-35.

“Without mission data, the F-35 is a very pretty, and some would say very loud, aircraft,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Tim Welde, 513th Electronic Warfare Squadron (EWS) commander. “With mission data, the F-35 is pure lethality.”Call it the brains behind the brawn.Now, Eglin is scheduled to get two more of the multimillion-dollar labs beginning this year, both catering to the needs of U.S. allies. Add to that the fact that Eglin is where F-35 pilots and maintainers from all U.S. branches and foreign nations are trained and it’s clear Eglin is the epicenter for activities that put the fight in the F-35.

The Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning II has had its share of controversy. The most expensive weapons program ever, it’s had growing pains, like other new weapon systems. But it’s a far more capable warplane than predecessors, a digital jet packed with fiber optics and programming that makes it a flying computer. It’s designed with jaw-dropping capabilities requiring more than 8 million lines of coding. For comparison, a million lines of coding is roughly 18,000 pages.

F-35 USRL• Manning and funding split 50/50

between the Air Force and Navy.• Staffing by Air Force active

duty and Air Force and Navy government civilians and subcontractors.

• 140 personnel (75 Air Force, 65 Navy). Will peak at 157 in 2017 with eventual steady state of 145.

• Expertise: mission data programmers (engineers), lab operators, maintainers and technicians, test engineers and managers, operational analysts, IT support and intelligence specialists.

Indeed, computer coding underpins all the F-35 capabilities. It enables

flight controls; radar functionality; communications, navigation and identification; electronic attack; sensor fusion; and weapons deployment. As of January 2015, more than 89 percent of the required F-35 software was flying. About 99 percent of required software had been coded, leaving 90,000 lines to be written, according to Lockheed.

What gives the F-35 battle smarts are the mission data files being created by Eglin’s electronic warfare experts.

“The mission data is solely produced by the government,” said Lt. Col. David Perez, commander of the 513th EWS. “Our lab here is entirely a government-owned-and-operated lab producing these files.”

Traditional electronic warfare reprog-ramming focused on defensive systems. But in the F-35, data is required for offensive capabilities, as well.

The data packages — the Air Force is working on 12 data files for 12 geographic regions — hold terrain and enemy threat information, including enemy radar, surface-to-air missiles and fighters, along with data on friendly forces, non-belligerents and commercial aircraft — all that

2

the pilots need for battle space awareness.

The F-35 is “capable of detecting any entity that’s in the airspace it’s operating, whether it be a threat, what we call a red system, a good guy, what we call a blue system, or neutral folks that we sometimes call gray systems, and also all the commercial systems, which we refer to as white,” said Perez.

The F-35s will go into battle packed with more data than other fighters.

“If you take two other Air Force platforms, the F-22 and the F-15, our mission data loads that we’re building are, in rough terms, about twice as big as that of an F-22 and about 10 times as big as that of an F-15,” said Perez.

All that information leads to the most distinct feature of the F-35: data fusion. Massive amounts of information from an array of sensors and mission data files are fused and provided to the pilot as clear, integrated, actionable information. It’s presented within a cyborg-like, custom-fitted helmet that’s the epitome of what the F-35 is all about. It’s where the intelligence of man and machine comes together.

When the 513th EWS was

activated in April 2010 to operate the $300 million Air Combat Command’s United States Reprogramming Lab (USRL), its task was to create, modify, validate and verify mission data files for the Air Force F-35A, Marine Corps F-35B and Navy F-35C. Being the sole provider of electronic warfare capability was a considerable undertaking.

The Pentagon had to do something to relieve the heavy workload of the Eglin lab. But there was another problem to address. It was the issue of access to source codes. The Pentagon has had a policy of never sharing source codes for any U.S. weapons system. But the F-35 is being developed by the United States, the primary funder, and partner nations who have spent millions. They wanted access to source codes to be able to modify data packages to suit their needs.

In October 2014, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, executive director of the JSF Program Office, said a compromise was reached that would ease the Eglin lab workload and at the same time provide reprogramming labs for partner nations.

As a result of that compromise,

there are now two mission data reprogramming centers: Reprogramming Center – East (RC-East) at Eglin, and Reprogramming Center – West (RC-West) at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, Calif.

RC-West consists of the F-35 Repro-gramming Laboratory (FRL), and its customers are Japan and Israel. Other nations will join that lab in the future.

RC-East, run by the 53rd Electronic Warfare Group (EWG), right now consists of the USRL run by the 513th EWS. In the near future, two more labs will be part of RC-East. In mid-2015, ground will be broken for the Australia, Canada, United Kingdom Reprogramming Lab (ACURL). Then in mid-2016, there will be a groundbreaking for the Norway, Italy Reprogramming Lab (NIRL). The labs will permit them to customize mission data that will be loaded on their planes.

“They will be manned by a combination of foreign nationals from each of those countries, as well as by U.S. government personnel and U.S. contractors,” said Perez.http://pensacolatoday.com/2015/04/

eglin-getting-two-new-f-35-labs/

1

F-35 Customers Funding U.S.-Based Software Update Labs

16 Oct 2015 Bill SweetmanForeign air forces using the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are being compelled to build and fund $150 million software laboratories, based in the U.S. and almost 50% staffed by U.S. personnel, that generate data crucial to the fighter’s ability to identify new radio-frequency threats.

This regime is more stringent and far-reaching than earlier U.S. fighter export deals. Those usually withheld key software — known as source code — from the customer, but in most cases allowed local users to manage their own “threat libraries,” data that allowed the electronic warfare (EW) system to identify radio-frequency threats, with in-country, locally staffed facilities.

For the U.K. in particular, the reliance on U.S.-located laboratories looks like a pullback from its earlier position. In 2006, concern over access to JSF technology reached the national leadership level, and prompted a declaration, by U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, that “both

governments agree that the U.K. will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the JSF such that the U.K. retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft.”

That promise seemingly contrasts with the severe limits now being imposed on non-U.S. access to the system.

Concerns about the lack of sovereignty and access to the core system — since customer laboratory personnel will not be co-located with operating units — are being voiced. A retired senior officer with the Royal Air Force comments that “the non-U.S. operators are going to have to take a very great deal on trust. Further, ‘rubbish in – rubbish out’ is still going to hold sway and I doubt that the non-U.S. customers will be able to check what is going in.” Security arrangements “seem to go a lot further and deeper” than on earlier platforms, he says.

Another source close to the U.K. user community notes that Lockheed Martin has advertised the capability of the “fusion engine” — the software that combines inputs from different sensors and datalinks — to identify targets and implement rules of engagement automatically. But if the

logic of the fusion engine itself is not understood at the U.K.’s operational level, he says, “You can imagine that this slaughters our legal stance on a clear, unambiguous and sovereign kill chain.”

The restrictions are also likely to be cumbersome. By contrast, “Swedish air force Gripens are often updated between sorties,” a Saab spokesman says. Signals intercepted and recorded by the fighter’s EW system on one sortie can be analyzed and the system updated in hours.

It’s not clear who, ultimately, would control the use of the foreign-funded laboratories, which will depend on host U.S. bases for power, communications and access. Lockheed Martin referred all questions on this topic to the JSF program office (JSFPO), which did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

But even the current security regime is the result of a compromise by the U.S. In September 2014, JSFPO director Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan indicated that the foreign-owned laboratories would allow the operators more access to the system than they would otherwise have enjoyed. This suggests that the initial U.S. position was that foreign

2

nationals would not be involved with reprogramming at all.

The JSFPO will not be the final U.S. authority on security measures. That is the Low Observables/Counter Low Observables Executive Committee (LO/CLO ExCom), the third and highest level of a special process of reviewing stealth technology transfers, managed by the Defense Technology Security Administration. Of about 700 requests for the export of stealth-related technology each year, only around 30 require the attention of the ExCom, with the rest approved or rejected at lower levels.

The mission data files (MDFs) generated in the U.S. labs are sensitive because they are essential to the aircraft’s stealth characteristics. They include information that allows onboard software to build a so-called “blue line” flightpath that avoids exposing its less-stealthy viewing angles to hostile radar. This process is based on a highly detailed model of the aircraft’s radar cross-section against all known threats and at all aspect angles, so any compromise of that data would be potentially catastrophic.

The MDFs also include target models that the sensor system uses to fuse radar, passive electronic and

electro-optical signals into a single set of target tracks. “Reprogramming used to be about survivability,” says RAF Air Commodore Linc Taylor, assistant Chief of Staff of Capability Delivery for Combat Air and Air ISTAR, “Now it’s about survivability and effectiveness.”

The MDFs are twice as large as the equivalent data load in the F-22, the Air Force has said. There are 12 packages covering different regions.

The Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, Michael Gilmore, has stressed the importance of the MDF process to the F-35’s capability and warned of delays. “Mission data load development and testing is a critical path to combat capability for Block 2B and Block 3F,” Gilmore said in his fiscal 2014 report. “Accuracy of threat identification and location depend on how well the mission data loads are optimized to perform in ambiguous operational environments.” Software and hardware used to create the MDFs was held by Lockheed Martin at Fort Worth for three years after its planned delivery to the first government reprogramming laboratory, delaying its delivery, DOT&E says.

The JSF program is standing up

two centers to produce and update MDFs, at Eglin AFB, Florida, and NAS Point Mugu, California. The western center will host a lab to support Japanese and Israeli F-35s. An Australia/U.K. facility and a laboratory to support Norway and Italy will be established at Eglin. Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract to build the Australia/U.K. facility in April. According to an Australian government document, the lab will have a staff of about 110 people, of whom 50 will be U.S. nationals, and the international partners will cover all its operating costs.

Until now, even the most advanced EW systems exported by the U.S. have included provisions for local updating. The United Arab Emirates uses a system of “object codes,” a form of middleware that allows its operators to program threats into the Northrop Grumman EW system on the F-16 Block 60. South Korea has an in-country reprogramming tool for the F-15K’s ALQ-135M that allows its air force to create, modify and maintain mission data and to produce mission data files, according to Northrop Grumman.http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-custom-

ers-funding-us-based-software-update-labs