Boeing and Northrop Grumman successfully demonstrate a working open Airborne Early Warning & Control system

Boeing’s Early Warning & Control system was successfully tested in conjunction with one of Northrop Grumman’s advanced sensors earlier this week. This success marks a significant step forward for the two companies demonstrating an open mission system potential.

The recent test consisted of two separate flights onboard a testbed aircraft, where the two systems were tested together. Both flights confirmed that Boeing’s OMS-compliant battle management command and control system could communicate with Northrop Grumman’s advanced, wide-band active electronically scanned array.

Open mission systems are created to allow customers to upgrade their systems inexpensively. This is achieved due to open mission systems’ innate ability to be quickly and easily implemented into new hardware and software. These types of systems also avoid the pitfalls of vendor lock-in.

Nancy Anderson, the vice president at Boeing, said that this new open system would allow customers “to have more flexibility to add or upgrade capabilities, select vendors and determine an implementation schedule.” Meaning, for example, that a company could quickly upgrade the AESA radar system to deal with evolving threats such as new combat aircraft.

Via Boeing

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