In an interview with John Fagnant, Director of ISR and Targeting Strategy at the Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems sector, SP’s Aviation discovered some of the historical and cultural qualities that have made the company a leader in Aesa technology. The former US Air Force F-15 pilot describes how the corporation developed unparalleled expertise as a radar house, citing how early radar developments aboard the F-16 contributed to present-day thought leadership in one of the defence industry’s newest technologies.

SP’s Aviation (SP’s): Is there a real difference between one AESA and another?

John Fagnant (Fagnant): In recent years we’ve seen a ground swell of people thinking “AESA is good” and “all AESAs are equally good” – that they’ve become homogenous. Northrop Grumman gets batched into the competition in the same manner. And that’s not correct. There’s a different discipline in the way we’ve approached our AESA developments which is significant for two reasons. First, it keeps us relevant in the modern battlefield. Second, it ties our engineering to our manufacturing through a generational-architecture mindset that allows us to get efficiencies in manufacturing across all the domains of AESAs that we build. We’ve based our approach on generational leaps in technology and capability, so we’re not piecemealing our architecture across the enterprise with separate, unique parts, which would make it more expensive and less efficient from a manufacturing standpoint. It’s about generating an “electronically scanned” culture.

SP’s: What do you mean by developing an “electronically scanned” culture?

Fagnant: Our AESA expertise actually goes back to the 1970s when we developed the AN/APG-66 with a mechanically scanned array for the F-16. We were up against competitors like Hughes and the concern from a purely engineering standpoint was that we were dealing with a very tiny nose on the aircraft where we had to graft in very modern radar capabilities. The main problem for our engineers was physical space, but they worked with that. They did what they could with the single receiver channel, but more importantly, they worked with the elements and the subcomponents that made up the entire system to get the maximum efficiency out of that radar from a physics standpoint.

Next, we had to do the same thing with software, which had to work efficiently with what was happening at the physics level—things like bandwidth purity or signal-to-noise ratio or swell intervals and other things you worry about in a transmit and receive environment. This combination of hardware and software efficiencies became the cultural mindset of a whole generation of hardware, electrical design, and software engineers for a time during the 1970s and 1980s not only for the AN/APG-66, but also for the AWACS. Many of these engineers are still here today at the company

At the same time, electrically scanned arrays (ESA) were being developed. One of these was AWACS, which is electrically scanned in the vertical, but not in the azimuth, where it spins. Also, when the B-1 ESA came out during the 1980s, we were bringing efficiencies learned in one programme to others in an electrically scanned aperture type of environment. As all this was happening at the same time, it created an engineering culture that determined how Northrop Grumman approached developing AESA technology.

SP’s: How did this strong engineering culture affect the development of the F-22 with its stealth technology?

Fagnant: Stealthy aircraft presented a difficult set of challenges to our engineers. Now we had to go to a fighter that was bigger than an F-16, but had to have electronics, RF noise, and transmit/receive purity understood to a degree that had never been approached before in aircraft history. We had already brought up this whole group of engineers that had to deal with those types of issues on an F-16. They understood how to get the maximum amount of physical efficiencies in electrical and RF environments, and how architecture could be applied to get the most out of the hardware.

During the time period we spent developing the F-16 radar, we were worried about electronic countermeasures, which were a key part of our software suites. Those things also contribute nicely to stealth technology because stealth depends on control of the electronic environment. You have quietness built in. You want to be able to reside in a stealthy environment and not have to worry about people jamming you from an electronic warfare standpoint because you can deny those capabilities. From a software standpoint, that type of capability paid off.

This approach led to the way we develop both hardware and software together—a culture that continues still today.

SP’s: AESA development is very expensive. What is Northrop Grumman doing about costs?

Fagnant: Back then, our mindset wasn’t to build one thing and say, “We’re just going to add this and add that.” The customers’ concern for diminishing manufacturing capabilities and expenses associated with hardware changeovers was a big deal to us. What we learned from the F-22 experience was, “Let’s continue that generational cycle.” Let’s make one major investment at a time to create a generational architecture of hardware and software modes that our entire customer base can take advantage of so that they’re not all paying the non-recurring costs associated with successive singular programmes. And that’s worked out pretty well for us. We are seeing important engineering and manufacturing efficiencies that translate into time and costs efficiencies for our customers.

This generational architecture just doesn’t reside in one or two airborne types of AESAs. You can see it in our ground-based, maritime, and high/low altitude aircraft. As we move forward into future AESAs, you actually get to see examples of where our AESAs are better because of all these cultural factors at play.

Let me use software engineering as an example. We spent a lot of time developing good electronic protection modes for small and stealthy aircraft. What has happened in the electronic warfare environment in recent years is a huge explosion of robust capability. Our engineering community thought about that and stayed ahead of that. Our joint strike fighter sensor systems and the systems that have followed are in very good shape because of our background in electronic protection and electronic countermeasures modes. And we’re transitioning all that—in that same generational mindset—to everything else that we build.