Aviation News - May 2016

NEXT GENERATION JAMMER

Another major aspect to the squadron’s

mission is the testing of new and revised

aircraft systems run by VX-30’s Projects

Department. Cdr Hanaki elaborated: “What

we do in our labs here at Point Mugu with VX-

30 staff also drives a lot of our mission. Big

projects like Next Generation Jammer are at

the forefront of what our squadron is working

on every day and will affect the battlespace

for years to come.”

This Navy programme, designed to

replace the 1970s ALQ-99 pod, is also

aimed at increasing offensive electronic

warfare (EW) technology. This jammer,

to be operational by 2020, is intended for

the Navy’s EA-18G Growler. Cdr Hanaki

added: “A lot of that development has been

going on at VX-30 and I think most people

don’t know the levels at which we support

that programme from the EW software

development, to the mission planning

software, which is why we have the F/A-

18 guys and EA-6B testers assigned to

the squadron. The mission planning and

software packages are obviously becoming

more and more important with the complex

missions our Navy aircraft take part in around

the world and we are getting increasingly

more test-speci c guys straight out of test

pilot school [TPS] to work on programmes

like that. The fact that they come here

straight from TPS is a shift in this squadron

as well. Effectively we are now a lead test

organisation, something we were not in the

past.

“The logic behind this is that when you

spend a lot of time in the advanced weapon

labs developing the software, working

with engineers, doing the lab testing and

making sure everything’s good to go, then

you can get more iterations of the software

developed before you go to an actual  ght

test. The more you can test it on the ground,

up front in the labs the better, because it’s so

expensive to  ight test. What we are  nding

is that by doing it this way you can actually

get a better more robust test programme

because you can discover a lot of things in

the labs early, that way you save money

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Bloodhound 700 starts a dive above the Channel Islands

off the coast of Southern California – note its carrier

arrester hook is lowered for the camera.

This KC-130T was recently acquired by the squadron from the

US Marine Corps and still carries the markings of that service.

20-27_vx30DC.mf.indd 25 06/04/2016 17:01