Lockheed Martin’s Project Hydra
WASHINGTON: Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has demonstrated a capability for F-22 and F-35 fighter jets to share situational awareness data in flight — via a U-2 spy plane kitted out with the company’s ‘translation’ software, says Dan Markham, Skunk Works director of JADO/BMC2. Lockheed also transmitted data from the F-35 to a ground station using a Navy datalink, TTNT, and then on from there to an Army network, IBCS.
“This is really the first time that all three of those live platforms in the air were connected,” he said in an interview yesterday.
The spring demonstration, dubbed Project Hydra, was partially funded by the Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency, Markham said. The goal of the project was to continue the evolution of Lockheed Martin’s Enterprise Mission Computer 2 (EMC2), nicknamed the Einstein Box. It’s being developed to link legacy platforms to each other and users on the ground to enable All-Domain Operations, he explained.
Project Hydra was not the first time a software ‘gateway’ was used to allow the incompatible F-22 and F-35 radio links to communicate. That milestone was accomplished during the Air Force’s first Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) on ramp, using a software system called gatewayONE developed by Lockheed Martin, Honeywell and Northrop Grumman. But in that demo, gatewayONE was installed in a tablet on the ground. Why can’t they talk with each other, you might wonder? Well, F-22s use a unique “Intra-Flight Data Link (IFDL)” that works only with other F-22s, while the newer F-35s use the stealthy Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL), which can only talk to other F-35s.
Markham explained that Skunk Works in December was able to use its own cloud-based software system, the Open Systems Gateway (OSG) embedded in the Einstein Box, to process sensor data on board during a flight of the U-2 Dragon Lady. But in that demo, the sensor data was collected by a computer node on the ground and then uplinked to the aircraft’s radio.
“This is the first time where we got all [three platforms] connected in the air at the same time … in an operational context,” Markham said.
The planes were able not just to talk to each other, but also the U-2 also transmitted situational awareness data gathered from the fighters to radio receivers on the ground. This included not just ‘blue force’ information about the planes themselves (such as their flight paths, number of weapons available for launch, etc.), but also the data on potential targets gathered by the fighters’ cockpit sensors.
During the Project Hydra demonstration, operators at both the Air Force’s Common Mission Control Center (CMCC) at Beale AFB, Calif., and the Shadow Operations Center at Nellis AFB, ‘were able to view the sensor and platform data to enable situational awareness for operational command and control,” Lockheed Martin’s press release said.
For example, Markham said, the Einstein Box on the U-2 transmitted F-35 sensor data to a ground-based computer using the Navy’s Tactical Targeting Network Terminal (TTNT, also known as Tactical Targeting Networking Technology developed by Collins Aerospace). The TTNT link is used by the Navy’s EA-18G Growler electronic warfare plane, and is being installed in the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets as part of the ongoing Block III upgrade by Boeing. The first two of those upgraded Super Hornets were delivered last year.
The demo “marked the first time F-35 sensor data was delivered to an operational ground system over a Tactical Targeting Network Terminal (TTNT) link using an airborne gateway,” the company’s release says.
From that ground computer, Lockheed Martin used its Airborne Sensor Adaptation Kit (A-Kit) to send the F-35 sensor data to the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) Tactical System Integration Laboratory (TSIL) at Fort Bliss. IBCS subsequently used the F-35 sensor data to conduct a simulated Army fires exercise. (IBCS is the linch-pin of the Army’s Project Convergence plans to build new capabilities to support Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2).
The EMC2 computer further demonstrated the ability to transmit data via the venerable Link 16, used by most NATO aircraft.
Markham said that Skunk Works is now planning a future demo to use the TTNT with more types of sensor data, possibly even from ships operating at sea.
“We’re trying to maximize maturation of technology, right? So, as we continue to build on top of past work and do these incremental progressive technology maturation demonstrations, they’re not repeating the same work. There’s always a new mission set or objective we’re trying to meet with each iteration,” Lockheed Martin spokesperson Ananda Costa explained during yesterday’s interview.
That process mimics how DoD and the services are attempting to develop new capabilities to substantiate JADC2 using agile development concepts and rolling tech iterations to build better and better operational performance over time, she said.
Further, Lockheed Martin is developing all its Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO) related software and hardware based on DoD’s Open Mission Systems standards so the services can avoid future stovepiping and vendor lock, she said.
“Ultimately at the end of the day, we’re driving to a JADO environment,” Costa said. “Part of JADO necessitates that whatever technology we are delivering and the capability we’re building, they have to work across services, across domains … to ensure faster, better decision-making.”
