BAE develop AN/ASQ-239 EW suite for F-35 with American input and has a manufacturing plant in Texas. Understand the difference.
“As Lockheed Martin’s electronic warfare integrator for all F-35 aircraft, we’re committed to equipping our customers with advanced capabilities that help them conduct their missions,” said Deborah Norton, vice president of F-35 Solutions at BAE Systems. “Under this collaborative agreement, we will work closely with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to enhance the capability of our fully integrated EW system – heightening pilots’ situational awareness and helping them evade, engage and defeat modern threats.”
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SPEWS-II is AN/ALQ-178 (V)5+ in American terms - it is good but old 2003 tech. You continue to forget for some reason or conveniently overlook facts to hype things you have no knowledge of.
World leader in EW technology?
As the UK and other European NATO members attempt to adapt their air forces to better meet the threat of wider Russian military aggression in the coming years, airborne electromagnetic warfare (EW) is a key area where non-US capabilities are in worryingly short supply across the Alliance.
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Dependency on the US
Currently, NATO’s air forces are heavily dependent on US Air Force (USAF) and US Navy (USN) aircraft to provide both stand-off and stand-in jamming against a high-end threat like Russia, although several other countries’ fighter fleets have impressive ECM capabilities already for close-range self-defence. NATO’s primary stand-off jamming capability is provided by USN EA-18G Growler aircraft and the USAF EC-130H Compass Call, which is now being replaced by the new EA-37B. SEAD support is also provided by the Tornado electronic combat/reconnaissance (ECR) aircraft of the Italian Air Force and German Air Force, as well as the F-16CM ‘Wild Weasels’ of the USAF’s 480th Fighter Squadron in Germany. However, in terms of EA systems, these Cold War-era aircraft only carry self-protection jamming equipment that is increasingly obsolescent against the more modern Russian threats if used without cover from the more powerful US stand-off systems like the EA-18G and EA-37B. The Tornado ECRs are also only available in small numbers, and the majority of the USAF F-16CM fleet is based in South Korea and Japan. It is notable that in almost any high-end NATO SEAD/DEAD exercise, USN EA-18Gs perform the majority of the EA support, since they offer by far the greatest capability in their class.
However, the USN attempted to withdraw its land-based EA-18G units from the European theatre in mid-2022 to bolster its presence in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East. The Growler is a critical part of the Carrier Air Wing force structure, and demand for its capabilities greatly outstrips the number of squadrons available to deploy at any given time. That attempt did not immediately lead to withdrawal, but relying on US EA support as a lynchpin of European NATO SEAD/DEAD capabilities remains a high-risk posture. One of the most likely scenarios in which Russia might risk direct conflict with a NATO member is if the US is drawn into either a serious military standoff or an actual conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific. In any clash over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, airborne EA assets would be some of the most in-demand in the entire US arsenal, meaning few if any EA-18G Growlers or USAF EA-37B Compass Call aircraft would be made available to respond to a Russian threat in Europe during a concurrent crisis. This means a much greater burden of the high-end EW effort would fall on European capabilities than in any previous post-Cold War conflict.
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The F-35 is also a potent airborne EW asset, and one that has been purchased by a large number of NATO members including the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Poland, Germany and Czechia. Despite being primarily designed for low-observable strike and SEAD/DEAD operations, its APG-81 radar and advanced mission systems enable highly effective ECM for self-defence and also provide potent stand-in jamming and potentially limited stand-off jamming capabilities against both airborne and surface threats. Even a few F-35s can greatly enhance the survivability of not only their own formation but also allied assets operating alongside them as part of composite air operations. However, the F-35 still faces tactical limitations that make it difficult to generate sustained EW effects for more than short bursts, and pilots potentially risk compromising their position to hostile sensors when emitting in this way. More advanced EA capabilities that formed part of the intended Block 4 upgrade have in many cases been delayed until at least 2029 by issues with the electrical power generation capacity of the existing F-135 engine and hardware manufacturing bottlenecks. Most countries that have bought F-35s also lack the capacity or rights to modify or create their own mission data sets, and instead rely on the US for their mission data and threat library updates.
However, this does not fully apply to the UK since it is part of the Australian, Canadian and United Kingdom Reprogramming Laboratory (ACURL), which enables it to generate UK-specific mission data. Beyond the ACURL for its F-35B fleet, the UK has several national airborne EW development and procurement programmes. For stand-in jamming effects, the RAF is exploring options for stand-in jamming payloads for its Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) programme, and continues to fund development work on a stand-in jamming variant of the MBDA SPEAR 3 miniature cruise missile called SPEAR EW. Potent ECM capabilities are also a core feature of the new ECRS Mk2 AESA radar, which is being procured to eventually be retrofitted onto the 40 Tranche 3 aircraft in the RAF Typhoon fleet. However, SPEAR EW has not actually been ordered so far, and the ECRS Mk2 has been developed very slowly compared to AESA radar development programmes for comparable fighters. On current timeframes, RAF Typhoons with the new radar are unlikely to be in service on the frontlines before the late 2020s. The threat outlook in Europe, therefore, would seem to suggest that allocating increased funding and priority to whichever of these existing programmes can offer the most rapid path to procurement and introduction to service is something that should be seriously considered. Given the lack of funding so far for ECRS Mk2 radar sets for the remaining 77 RAF Tranche 2 Typhoons, urgent updates to the capability of their existing ESM and Defensive Aid Sub-System (DASS) suites should also be examined – especially if novel software techniques could improve capability faster than hardware upgrades planned but not yet funded within the Typhoon LTE construct.
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SIT DOWN, man.
"and the ECRS Mk2 has been developed very slowly compared to AESA radar development programmes for comparable fighters."
Yes, the British are catching up. But the US is not sitting idle and developing even more powerful and advanced EW systems than before.
You Europeans make big claims but are nothing without American support. The US is the undisputed champion in developing advanced hardware and military stuff. The US provides business to BAE so this company does not go kaput.
