The impact of Electronic Warfare on a 21st Century Fighter

By John Reardo, Publisher, COTS Journal

What can go wrong is a question for the ages, but when paired with the complexities of an F-35 aircraft, the challenges are daunting, to say the least. One Stop Systems, a company known for building advanced, high-performance platforms recently won a contract to provide the US Airforce an advanced system to simulate Electronic Warfare threats on the F-35 aircraft. The idea is to bombard the plane with an array of RF mix signals to challenge the safeguards employed and determine the worldwide EW threats the aircraft may encounter.

The F-35

The F-35 is an aircraft in three iterations with numerous variants to address various needs. From vertical take-off to supersonic speeds, the plane, with over 600 in service for the United States and a similar number being used by our allies, has become the predominant stealth fighter jet in the world.

The plane has brought together the latest technology to achieve overall air superiority. The aircraft can dominate all battle theater by using the most advanced engine and RADAR system available.

To protect its dominance in the air, engineers are using advanced simulation to test the vulnerabilities of the aircraft. The F-35 has a complex sensor array that needs to be challenged for its deficiencies that might cause failures. These can be brought about by a geographically specific threat or through never perceived compound actions from our adversaries.

Electronic Warfare

Electronic warfare (EW), as defined by the Department of Defense (DOD), is military activities that use electromagnetic energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum (“the spectrum”) and attack an enemy. The spectrum is a range of frequencies for electromagnetic energy that has recently been updated to include the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Competing powers have come to understand our reliance as a vulnerability. This has created a race for supremacy in understanding the EW spectrum to create a theater dominance. This is achieved through denying access, degrading, or accessing the EMS-dependent systems of our adversaries. The impact would significantly degrade the overall threat.

The ability to challenge a platform like the F-35 is a technically difficult task requiring high computational speeds and the ability to access high-speed storage synchronously. The OSS SDS (Short Depth Server) is an ideal choice for the Airforce. OSS has used this platform for other SIGINT applications on board the Rivet Joint, a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, and a similar application involving RADAR for the Army.

The threat to be monitored is a range of frequencies from zero to infinity. By simulating the oscillating electronic fields characterized by frequency and wavelength, the system can manufacture a wide array of physical characteristics, including radio waves, microwaves, millimeter waves, infrared radiation, etc., both manmade and naturally occurring. The SDS is ideal for repetitively calculating FFTs (Fast Fourier Transforms) due to its three architectural advantages: the GPU-based parallel processing, the PCIe interconnect, and the low latency storage supported by OSS’ ION software.

The Threat

The F-35 is a complex aircraft that moves at 1.6 times the speed of sound; it has only a single pilot and relies heavily on accurate and secure data which can be threatened by electronic warfare. Electronic threats come in three primary forms. Electromagnetic attacks (EA) involve directed energy to destroy operational capabilities. EA can include either offensive or defensive measures. Examples include expendable decoys or high-energy lasers. ES, or Electromagnetic Warfare Support, is a close cousin to SIGINT because they have similar functions of search, interception, identification, location, and exploitation of electromagnetic radiation. ES is distinguished by the oversight of the operational commander allowing it to be more effectively used during peacetime. Electromagnetic Protection, or EP, is what we think about most when considering EW. EP allows for friendly RADAR and comms to be unaffected in the presence of jamming our adversaries.

Electronic warfare employs various features for detection, denial, deception, disruption, degradation, exploitation, protection, and destruction.

The Challenges

Determining the vulnerabilities of an F-35 aircraft with the most advanced systems architectures ever employed and the possibilities of cascading issues increases the threat exponentially. Many experts worldwide believe the Russians have the most experienced and best-equipped EW units. Combine this with China making significant investments, and how these threats may evolve is still being determined. This is not unlike the threats the Navy faces with the most powerful ships, such as the Aircraft Carrier Gerald Ford, which now finds itself more vulnerable to swarms of drones than ever before; the F-35 faces unknown threats in the form of EW. It is incumbent on the OSS solution to ensure these systems are fully functional and remain in perfect working order.

One area that is key to the aircraft is the AN/APG-81 fire control RADAR. Being able to track multiple targets, whether air-to-air or air-to-ground, including high-resolution mapping and ultra-high bandwidth communications, challenging any possible vulnerability of the system is required to affirm the plane is not impacted.

The ability to obtain supremacy is hampered by the need to be specific to the enemy rather than impede friendly aircraft simultaneously. This challenge requires both an offensive and defensive posture that improves our systems from attack as we learn the impact of threats. Another concern is international law’s commercial constraints in governing the RF spectrum and how EW Supremacy might impact civilian concerns.

The Key Elements

The features of the SDS are suited for the volumes of simulation data required that demand high speeds with very low latencies. The PCIe Gen 5 platform is highly configurable and will be upwardly compatible as future generations hit the market, making it a perfect choice for the application. Another attractive feature of the SDS is the hot-swap SSD drive canisters that allow the system to avoid storage constraints throughout an entire simulation test. The ability to have a contiguous simulation without interruption was vital to the Airforce’s need.

The OSS SDS is highly scalable and can support up to nine racks of simulation equipment along with hot swap and high-capacity storage canisters supporting up to 490TB of data. Ideal for flight line use, the canisters can easily be removed without interrupting the simulation to be reviewed in a lab environment in greater detail.

One critical concern is the speed and latency surrounding the storage component of the platform. OSS used its industry-leading ION 6.1.0 storage accelerator software. The ION software toolset was developed by an advanced team of storage experts at a research facility in Utah in conjunction with Western Digital. Designed for use across numerous platforms, the ION software supports various RAID configurations with throughput up to 50GB/Sec with latency well below the required 100 microseconds. By delivering this near-native NVMe performance, ION was a perfect match for the application.

Conclusion

The threat of Electronic Warfare is increasing exponentially as our reliance on complex sensor arrays and contributing data sets increase. The SDS, from OSS, will contribute significantly to our ability to achieve the air supremacy sought. From the multiple terabytes per second in computing ability to the PCIe backbone that can transfer data at a blinding speed of 32 GB/s, the SDS performs outside a data center like no other.

The OSS SDS platform employs an architecture incorporating the fastest system design possible with an eye toward the future. The F-35 vulnerabilities are identified and fixed in real-time using an FFT algorithm in this highly efficient environment. This and other advances will take the United States from a position of participating to being a leader in EW.