Web Page sponsor Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
07 Sep 10. Northrop Grumman is shifting its strategy in proposing upgrades to keep the U.S. Air Force E-8C Joint Stars intelligence aircraft alive. Last year, Senate appropriators cited a $5.5bn price to outfit the 17-aircraft airborne ground surveillance (AGS) fleet with new engines, provide a major radar replacement and add defenses. Although Northrop Grumman officials say that figure was bloated, they have moved toward a lower-cost approach for Joint Stars improvements. The new strategy, focusing on a different sensor suite, comes as the Air Force is in the midst of a study on how to handle the AGS mission in the future. Options include proceeding with the E-8C as is, upgrading it or using a Boeing 737-based design. Preliminary results for the ground moving-target indicator (GMTI) analysis of alternatives, being conducted by Air Combat Command, should be ready in March 2011. But shifts requiring near-term funding could be noted around the end of the year, in time for inclusion into the Fiscal 2012 budget request. The major change is to the sensor upgrade plan. Previously, Northrop Grumman was pushing a replacement of the legacy APY-7 with the developmental Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) scalable, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. A Northrop Grumman/Raytheon team encountered problems developing new “concurrent” modes for the Air Force on MP-RTIP, and it is late for introduction onto the Global Hawk unmanned aerial system (Aerospace DAILY, June 22). MP-RTIP also will be used by NATO for its AGS mission. The proposal now is to mount two 1 X 8-ft. AESAs on the E-8C’s forward fuselage (one on each side), according to Stephen Pauly, Northrop’s director for Joint Stars development and modernization.
The antennas would be based on the radar technology used for the F-22 and F-35 aircraft, he says. MP-RTIP was designed to allow operators not to “break track” on a GMTI target while using the same array to snap a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image. Currently, this is a problem for the APY-7, which sometimes takes minutes away from a ground track to execute a SAR request. Pauly says use of the three sensors — the two cheek arrays and the APY-7 — could be geared to generate the effect of concurrent operations. The APY-7 could be for continuous ground-track intelligence collection, while targets of interest could then be imaged by the cheek arrays, he says, thus not requiring a break in GMTI operations. These arrays also could have inherent capabilities for communications. A formal cost estimate for the cheek arrays is not yet finished, but Pauly says it would require roughly $1bn for the Joint Stars fleet. Another $900m is needed to complete the re-engining program for Joints Stars. And the company is proposing an upgraded receiver and