The Growler
Fitted with advanced electronics, Super Hornet derivative takes major steps toward replacing the venerable Prowler
By GLENN W. GOODMAN Jr., Special Correspondent
The first flight of a Boeing EA-18G Growler test aircraft in August marked a new chapter in the evolution of Navy radar jamming aircraft. The Growler is slated to begin replacing the Navy’s venerable EA-6B Prowler in 2009.
Prowlers have been the sole tactical aircraft providing electronic jamming of enemy air defense radars for all of the U.S. services since 1996, following a decision by the Air Force to retire its EF-111A Ravens. The EA-6B, built by Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems in Bethpage, N.Y., initially entered service in 1971, and its jamming suite has been upgraded several times.
The EA-18G Growler combines the capabilities of the two-seat Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter with a state-of-the-art radar and communications jamming suite developed by Northrop Grumman. That suite will be an enhanced version of the Improved Capability (ICAP) III system fielded on 10 EA-6Bs over the past two years. ICAP III-equipped EA-6Bs drew raves from Navy aircrews following the first two aircraft carrier deployments of the upgraded Prowlers this year to the Persian Gulf in support of operations in Iraq.
Under current funding plans, the Navy will not order any additional ICAP III systems for Prowlers after this year and cap the number of EA-6Bs with ICAP III at 15. This will leave most Prowlers with the less capable but still formidable ICAP II system, introduced in 1984, until they are retired.
Operating and maintaining the aging Prowler fleet is costly, so the Navy is eager to transition to the more modern and reliable EA-18G, which will share a common logistics infrastructure with the service’s Super Hornets. Thanks to cockpit automation, the EA-18G will be able to perform its missions with only a two-person aircrew, compared with four in the EA-6B, saving on manpower costs.
The Growler is faster and more maneuverable than the Prowler, giving it a true escort jamming capability. The Navy will be able to fully integrate the EA-18G into strike packages of conventional attack aircraft, such as F/A-18s and Air Force F-16s. The less survivable EA-6B has been used in a more limited “modified escort” or standoff jamming role, according to Cmdr. John Meyer, EA-6B and EA-18G requirements officer on the Navy staff.
There are 111 Prowlers left in the Navy-Marine Corps inventory, with 73 operational across 10 aircraft carrier squadrons (41 planes), three Navy expeditionary squadrons (12 planes) and four Marine Corps squadrons (20 planes). The other 38 EA-6Bs are undergoing upgrades or structural rebuilds, or are used in the Navy’s training squadron. The 12 land-based Prowlers of the Navy expeditionary squadrons primarily support Air Force air operations.
The current Navy plan is to retire the expeditionary squadrons and field 90 EA-18Gs to replace the Prowlers in its carrier squadrons, with five Growlers per squadron, all by 2012, Meyer told Seapower. That plan is in keeping with a memorandum of agreement with the Air Force, he said, in which that service committed to take over the expeditionary role from the Navy by developing and fielding a standoff jamming aircraft, currently an unfunded Air Force requirement.
The Navy awarded F/A-18 manufacturer Boeing Integrated Defense Systems of St. Louis a $1 billion Growler System Development and Demonstration contract in December 2003.
Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told the House Armed Services Committee last March that the Growler would provide “a significant enhancement over the EA-6B’s capability to detect, identify, locate and suppress hostile emitters. The EA-18G will blend the proven capabilities of the EA-6B with the missionized F/A-18F airframe. The result will be a significant increase in warfighting capability, survivability and compatibility with performance profiles of the aircraft it supports in combat. The shared airframe results in cost savings to all Super Hornet variants by enabling the optimization of common support and maintenance infrastructures.”
However, the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, in its markup of the Navy’s fiscal year 2007 budget request, zeroed the service’s plan to order the first 12 of 90 Growler low-rate-initial-production aircraft in 2007, apparently based on the recommendations of an April 2006 Government Accountability Office report, which argued that the Navy was moving the EA-18G into production too quickly.
The Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, in its markup, cut the Navy’s request from 12 aircraft to eight. The House-Senate Appropriations Conference Committee included eight aircraft in the final version of the fiscal 2007 spending bill it approved Sept. 21.
Any cutback in the Navy’s planned EA-18G production buy will delay the retirement of the EA-6B Prowlers beyond 2012, Meyer said.
The ICAP III upgrade program for the EA-6B was initiated, in particular, to address capability gaps against mobile air defense radars. In 1998, the Navy awarded Northrop Grumman the development contract for ICAP III, which entered low-rate production in August 2003 and passed its independent operational evaluation in September 2004.
VAQ (Electronic Attack Squadron)-139 of Whidbey Island, Wash., was the first Prowler squadron to deploy overseas with ICAP III, completing a tour with an air wing aboard the carrier USS Ronald Reagan this summer, followed closely by VAQ-137 of Whidbey Island, which had deployed on the carrier USS Enterprise. Both squadrons consisted of four ICAP-III Prowlers and used dual basing on the carrier in the Persian Gulf and in Al Asad, Iraq. Their aircrews gave high marks to the ICAP III system after they returned to the states.
The heart of the EA-6B ICAP III upgrade is the new ALQ-218 wideband receiver. Produced by Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems in Baltimore, the ALQ-218 is the first receiver system of its kind that can perform selective-reactive jamming, which a Navy press release says means “it can more effectively concentrate jamming power [from the Prowler’s ALQ-99 external jamming pods] on multiple specific radar frequencies. Previous technologies worked by attempting to jam across larger bandwidths, which dispersed the aircraft’s jamming power.”
In addition, the new receiver can accurately identify the location of any radar it detects, improving surgical jamming and cuing onboard High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs). The returning aircrews of VAQ-139 and VAQ-137 singled out the accuracy and speed of the ALQ-218’s geo-location capability as a major advance with ICAP III.
The EA-18G will use most of the same ICAP III systems as the EA-6B, with some added improvements. Like the Prowler, the EA-18G also will carry up to five ALQ-99 jamming pods, which can operate simultaneously. But the Growler typically will carry under each of its wings one high-band jamming pod and an auxiliary fuel tank, as well as one HARM and one Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, along with a single low-band pod under the fuselage.
The Super Hornet’s twin angled tails do not have the structural strength to carry antenna pods, so wingtip pods are being used for the ALQ-218 on the Growler. The EA-18G’s ALQ-218 also features an added new digital auxiliary receiver. Mike Gibbons, Boeing’s EA-18G program manager, said the digital receiver improves the ALQ-218’s ability to filter signals and discern threat emitters in crowded frequency bands.
In place of the EA-6B’s USQ-113 communications jammer, the EA-18G will feature the smaller, more capable ALQ-227 Communications Countermeasures Set being developed by Raytheon Network-Centric Systems in Fort Wayne, Ind. The ALQ-227 is only a receiver, not a receiver and jammer like the USQ-113, but it will use the ICAP III low-band jammer pod to do its communications jamming. A new solid-state Low-Band Transmitter for that pod entered low-rate initial production at BAE Systems in Lansdale, Pa., in fiscal year 2005, and deliveries of production units to the Navy began recently.
Doug Swoish, Northrop Grumman’s EA-6B ICAP III program director, said the new transmitters will be deployed initially on Prowlers next year.
Like the ICAP III Prowler, the Growler will carry the Multi-mission Advanced Tactical Terminal, which receives — in flight via satellite — and processes near-real-time intelligence broadcast reports. The two aircraft also will be equipped with the Link 16 Multi-function Information Distribution System line-of-sight data link radio. The radio’s terminals automatically exchange situational awareness information with each other in real time, particularly the locations of friendly and enemy aircraft, ships and ground forces as well as enemy air defenses.
EA-18G aircraft EA-1, which conducted its maiden flight over St. Louis Aug. 15, is outfitted with the full EA-18G weapons system avionics suite. It will be joined this fall by aircraft EA-2. The two systems design and development aircraft will undergo development flight tests at the Navy’s Patuxent River, Md., and China Lake, Calif., ranges through 2008. EA-1 also will undergo extensive ground testing in the anechoic chamber at Patuxent River to assess onboard radar, ALQ-218 receiver and ALQ-99 jamming system compatibility and performance.
The Growler flight test program already got a leg up through the use of several modified E and F Super Hornets to test EA-18G flying qualities, aeromechanical loads and carrier suitability. For example, on May 30, a modified F/A-18F flew with high-band and low-band jamming pods and ALQ-218 wingtip antenna pods in the first of 25 carrier suitability tests at Patuxent River involving a variety of takeoff and landing situations.
The Navy plans to make a low-rate-initial-production decision in April 2007 for the first batch of aircraft and another for the next 18 a year later. Navy Capt. Steve Kochman and Greg Drohat, the co-deputy program managers for the EA-18G within the F/A-18 program office at Patuxent River, said the Navy plans to conduct an independent Operational Assessment prior to both of those milestone decisions.
Aircraft EA-1 and EA-2 will be tested in the first assessment and four “production-representative” Growlers ordered in fiscal year 2006 will be tested in the second, they said. Deliveries of the first aircraft will begin in November 2008. A three-to-four-month independent operational evaluation will occur prior to a full-rate production decision in April 2009.
“We believe that we will have an adequate amount of operational testing to demonstrate the capabilities and the maturity of the system at those sequential decision points,” Drohat said.
Countering the Government Accountability Office assertion that the EA-18G program is moving into production too fast, Meyer said, “The Growler is essentially a marriage of two mature and proven systems — the Super Hornet airframe and the ALQ-218 from ICAP III — and not a major development of risky new technologies.”
