Northrop Grumman Corporation has received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to continue preparing the AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS) for developmental test and full hardware qualification. Northrop Grumman is preparing IVEWS for a series of hardware and software verification tests leading up to F-16 flights planned for later in 2022. The company will also continue development of the infrastructure needed to move the system to production once testing is complete.
“We continue the process of putting IVEWS through a rigorous testing program to ensure that it will be ready to protect warfighters. As advanced radio frequency threats proliferate, the capabilities IVEWS will provide are critical for the fourth-generation fighter fleet,” said James Conroy, vice president, navigation, targeting and survivability, Northrop Grumman.
IVEWS provides a next generation EW system that is internal to the F-16 and interoperable with the on-board APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. It is designed to Open Missions Systems requirements and provisioned for long-term growth capability to support future upgrades such as the Fiber Optic Tow Decoy, Adaptive/Cognitive Processing, and Open System Architecture compliance. This allowed the Air Force to strategically select IVEWS as the advanced fleet EW solution for the F-16.
In 2021, the company’s IVEWS and AN/APG-83 SABR radar demonstrated pulse-to-pulse interoperability at the Northern Lightning joint exercise, operating against a range of airborne and ground-based threats. IVEWS leverages an open-systems, ultra-wideband architecture, providing the instantaneous bandwidth needed to defeat modern threats. This F-16 system is part of a mature product line of electronic warfare capabilities that can be adapted to virtually any platform.
