Northrop Grumman IVEWS Platform Undergoes Air Force LIVE Testing

The U.S. Air Force has subjected Northrop Grumman’s AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite to a Laboratory Intelligence Validated Emulator test to review the system’s ultra-wideband architecture for the first time.

During the LIVE test, officials bombarded IVEWS with simulated air defense radar pulses to see if the system could identify and counter them. Northrop said IVEWS was able to counter the pulses and exceeded the Air Force’s benchmarks.

The radar pulses used were validated models that simulated adversarial radio frequency threats, Northrop said Tuesday.

James Conroy, vice president of navigation, testing and survivability at Northrop, said the successful evaluation is a key step towards full IVEWS fielding and brings the company closer to protecting Air Force crew and assets against advanced RF threats.

IVEWS is an electronic warfare suite designed for the Air Force’s F-16 fleet. It provides extended frequency coverage, full spatial coverage and rapid response support and features broadband amplifiers and countermeasure modulations.

IVEWS allows F-16 pilots to detect, identify, locate and defeat next-generation sensors and weapons. It is fully digital and founded on secure, modular and open systems.

The test came nearly one year after the Air Force awarded Northrop a contract to continue preparing IVEWS for developmental tests and hardware qualification.