The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Mass., has just completed an upgrade on the French Airborne Warning and Control System fleet, delivering the fourth and last E-3F AWACS this month. The Radar System Improvement Program package improves the E-3’s surveillance capability by increasing the sensitivity of the Doppler radar, allowing the aircraft to detect and track small targets. The RSIP upgrade also improves the radar’s electronic counter-countermeasures capability, and improves the radar’s antenna, receivers and transmitters. ESC’s Brian Schultz said that the center has been working on providing the same capability for some other international AWACS fleets.
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
