The Air Force’s Fleet Viability Board is engaged in assessing the higher-than-anticipated wear and tear the operations in Southwest Asia may have placed on the service’s EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare platform, reports Flight Global. The assessment is due in January. Col. Stephen Brown, chief of electronic warfare requirements, told Flight Global that USAF’s 14 EC-130H communications jamming aircraft have flown at more than double the expected rate. (Compass Call sorties for Afghanistan surpassed 2,000 this summer; those over Iraq were at 3,000 earlier this year.) We reported earlier this month that the Air Force is hoping to pair with the Navy in its new EA-18G Growler. Maj. Gen. David Scott, Air Staff requirements director, also said the service is pursuing, as yet unidentified, stand-in capabilities for the airborne electronic attack mission. It has abandoned, once and for all, the notion of a B-52 stand-off jammer.
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
