For the first time, a Royal Canadian Air Force plane has entered Edwards AFB’s Benefield Anechoic Facility (BAF), a state-of-the-art center for electronic warfare testing.
A team of engineers, operators and defense scientists from Canada are wrapping up electronic warfare testing of a CC-130J Hercules transport plane at the facility in southern California.
Canada is updating its fleet of legacy CC-130H aircraft with the J model, which is the same as the US Air Force C-130J and is used for the tactical airlift of troops and supplies.
The team has conducted multiple tests in the past few weeks focusing on the ALR-56M radar warning receiver and its integration with the rest of the Defensive Electronic Warfare Suite and aircraft mission computer.
“The BAF is the closest thing to actually flying the aircraft in [a radio frequency] threat environment,” said Emil Poliakov, a Canada Department of National Defense radar warfare engineer. “The chamber allows us to execute multiple test objectives in a controlled-repeatable manner and collect data to evaluate the radar warning receiver’s technical performance and effectiveness.”
The isolation from outside interferences enables testers to determine the electromagnetic compatibility of the CC-130J’s systems.
The test team designed all the emitters the BAF is going to generate around a fictional threat area.
The electronic warfare data collected during this testing will be shared with partner nations as part of the Multinational Test and Evaluation Program agreement signed last year between the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia.
June 16, 2016
