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The Marine Corps’ AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR).

In this Q&A on Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), we talk to Northrop Grumman’s Tom Wears, director of Strategy & Mission Solutions, for a high-level overview of the evolving threat landscape and how it is changing due to the near-peer threat of Russia and China, combined with the shift in strategy for the U.S. armed forces and specifically the Navy’s vision and CONOPS for Project Overmatch and Distributed Maritime Operations.

We then talk to Mike Meaney, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s Maritime/Land Systems & Sensors division, to discuss two important programs enabling DMO: the Marine Corps’ AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR); and the Navy’s Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 3 program, which will upgrade the fleet’s capability to electronically attack anti-ship missiles.

Breaking Defense: How do you view the evolving threat landscape, particularly how DMO and the Navy’s Project Overmatch relate to the Great Power competition and near-peer-threats?

Tom Wears, Director of Strategy & Mission Solutions, Northrop Grumman.

Wears: The Navy has been moving toward a distributed type of operation for a while now. One of the early instantiations of that was when the Navy implemented the program called Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air, which is networking a system of sensors so that a dispersed force can detect a long-range threat like an aircraft, communicate that information within the network, and then apply the shooter in the best position to engage that aircraft. It’s an any sensor, any shooter architecture for counter air, in particular, that’s been around for a number of years.

In the 2015 timeframe, the Navy started talking about an operating concept called Distributed Lethality. This was the concept of moving away from the original battle group structure that the Navy has used since the end of World War II, and toward a more widely dispersed fleet that has greater reach without being as closely connected physically.

So why is the Navy doing this? Part of it is the evolution of technology and the proliferation of technology amongst our near-peer competitors that have very sophisticated sensors and weapons. These include the introduction of hypersonic weapons that make operating in the traditional carrier battle group type of structure more dangerous than it used to be.

There are advantages in not concentrating forces and spreading out the structure so it also has a much wider reach of sensors to surveil the area.

Breaking Defense: Explain the connection between DMO and JADC2.

Wears: There’s a subtle difference between the two. Distributed Maritime Operations is a fleet operating concept. But it’s supported by Project Overmatch, which is the Navy’s instantiation of the JADC2 objectives.

JADC2 is at the joint level, and each of the services have a role. Each service has unique needs and requirements to achieve that. The Army has Project Convergence, the Air Force has ABMS (Advanced Battle Management System), and at the Navy it is Overmatch.

At the end of the day, all three of those separate approaches need to tie together into this JADC2 architecture. From my standpoint, that’s going to be a journey.

Breaking Defense: Where do we stand today on making progress toward DMO?

Wears: The Navy has been clear that the initial focus of its Overmatch program is to support carrier strike group operations very far forward in the next couple of years with JADC2-like features.

And because this is needed in the short term, there’s no time to develop new systems or integrate new types of architecture. The near-term challenge is figuring out how we can use what we currently have and evolve it to the extent that we can in a short period of time start providing those JADC2-like capabilities to the fleet.

This will build and mature progressively. More platforms will be brought into it and new types of communication systems and networks will be applied over time. At the end of the day, they all tie back together into this JADC2-type architecture.

The Marine Corps equivalent is called Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. They have been very public about returning to their expeditionary roots. Their future is going to be helping the Navy achieve the sea-control and power-projection mission from forward islands and lands. Using radar systems like G/ATOR, which is a Marine Corps program of record, they will be able to surveil very wide areas of ocean around territory.

Breaking Defense: What is the perspective that Northrop Grumman brings to the Navy and Marines in support of DMO?

Wears: Our division, Maritime/Land Systems & Sensors, supports the Navy and the Marine Corps in a number of different areas. Mike’s going to talk to a couple of those capabilities, which all relate to both the Distributed Maritime Operation challenge and the Project Overmatch challenge, which is the networking of multi-domain sensors and platforms to achieve the effects that the Navy needs to counter peer and near-peer adversaries.

Northrop Grumman is well positioned to help with that because we have platforms and sensors in all the different maritime domains—literally from seabed to space. We know how they work and how they support our various customers’ missions. We are uniquely positioned to listen to the Navy’s operational needs and help them understand potential solutions to meeting those needs by bringing together platforms and sensors that may or may not have traditionally supported maritime missions, but we’ve shown that they can if brought together properly.

Breaking Defense: Let’s talk about a couple of the platforms/systems/sensors that Northrop is developing and fielding to support the Navy’s vision for Overmatch. Let’s start with G/ATOR.

Mike Meaney, Vice President of Northrop Grumman’s Maritime/Land Systems & Sensors Div.

Meaney: The Marines have five different families of radars, each doing a different type of mission. All were getting old and hard to support. They wanted to replace them all with one new system and that’s what we developed for them with the G/ATOR system.

Rather than having five completely different radar families and the sustainment that goes with each, it’s one set of hardware with software applications to switch between the Marines’ various missions. Fundamentally, it’s a surveillance asset and provides the situational awareness that the Marines want under the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations program that Tom mentioned.

G/ATOR quickly identifies that there is something in the air like a rocket, artillery, or mortar, and identifies where it’s going to land so we can provide warning to our Marines. It can also quickly identify where it came from, and information can be sent up to Marines artillery units. With the human in the loop, decisions are made and we can put fire on a target before the second round is launched. It is a highly successful capability that we’ve demonstrated many different ways.

It’s a flexible system and fundamentally software defined, which allows us to expand it to new and different missions in straightforward ways. Since it has the ability to replace the Marines’ five existing radars, it has a range of different command and control interfaces on it because sometimes we need an AFATDS (Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System) interface for guns or artillery, a different interface for interacting with personnel that are tied into the ships, and another interface to the Navy’s Raytheon-managed Cooperative Engagement Capability sensor network with integrated fire control capability to provide situational awareness information for the broader C2 networks that the Marines connect into.

Providing this situational awareness to the warfighter is inherently a foundational building block to the DMO mission. It’s one of the sensors that are out there forward deployed providing situational awareness and connecting to many different C2 networks.

Anechoic-chamber testing of the Navy’s Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block 3 program.

Breaking Defense: Let’s move on to the SEWIP Block 3 program and how it enables DMO.

Meaney: Under Block One, the Navy procured upgraded displays and processors. For Block Two, they procured an Electronic Support Measure system or ESM to surveil the environment and identify where the RF emitters are and what kind of threats those might represent.

We provide the electronic attack subsystem, or Block Three. Its job is to knock down anti-ship missiles that are launched against the deployed fleet. Electronic attack systems like Block Three provide the ship’s commander and crew an unlimited magazine of non-kinetic bullets to knock down these anti-ship missiles.

Having the ability to non-kinetically engage multiple targets simultaneously saves the kinetic weapons in the missile hold of the ship for offensive needs rather than defending the ship against anti-ship missiles. Ships are limited to how many kinetic weapons they can carry, so this is a force multiplier in multiple different ways for the Navy.

Like we did with G/ATOR, SEWIP Block Three is inherently software defined. We developed it as an open architecture, and made sure it was capable of not only the electronic attack function but multifunction RF capabilities, as well. While this capability is not specifically required by the Navy, we demonstrated the ability for a multifunction RF system (Integrated Topside, or InTOP) to do electronic attack, communications, signals intelligence, and even some simple radar capabilities and modes.

We have these very wide band RF AESA apertures where we can put RF energy exactly where we need it with whatever beam width is required to conduct the mission. There can be multiple RF beams on each of the apertures, and we can rapidly steer those beams wherever they need to go.

A Block Three system is inherently a multi-function-capable system. Right now the Navy needs one of those functions and we’ve developed that and proven that. We’ve completed our engineering and manufacturing development phase. We’ve deployed that system out for Navy testing at Wallops island. The first two limited rate production units will be delivered in 2021, and will be installed on Arleigh Burke DDG destroyers and sent out for sea trials.

So why am I talking about SEWIP as it relates to DMO and JADC2? Since it’s inherently multifunction, it also has the ability to enter the fray and provide DMO and JADC2-type capabilities.