Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) Recapitalization

Wyvern said:
This seems to be a proposal based off of the Gulfstream G550. I hope it might help.
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On a tangent:
www.yahoo.com

Luxury jet makers battle over lucrative spy plane niche

Last month, a ghostly grey business jet took off from central Sweden and headed across the Baltic on a routine spying mission. The converted Gulfstream, caught on a tracking website, was flown by the Swedish Air Force and patrolled an area thick with Russian radar signals off the militarised...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com
 
Archibald said:
www.airforcemag.com

Air Force Asks to Retire 201 Aircraft, Buy 91 in 2022 | Air & Space Forces Magazine

The Air Force has asked to retire 201 legacy aircraft, many of them fighters, and buy 91 new ones in its fiscal 2022 budget request.
www.airforcemag.com www.airforcemag.com

E-8 (JSTARS)(4)($106.5)
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Wait, why are they retiring E-8 JSTARS ?? Are they crazy ? C-130s, A-10s, F-16s and F-15s are plentiful but JSTARS ?? I thought they were as scarce and useful as AWACS, what did I missed ? a successor ?
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TomcatViP said:
They've got their F-35s.
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The Air Force is still trying to salvage ABMS, despite great scepticism in Congress:
www.c4isrnet.com

The Air Force’s new ABMS strategy: Buy new capability, now

In buying the first pieces of the Advanced Battle Management System, the Air Force hopes to prove the program's worth.
www.c4isrnet.com www.c4isrnet.com
 
Might these throw a spanner in the works?

www.thedrive.com

The Army Lays Out Plans For Its New Intelligence Gathering Jet

The Army has an ambitious scheme for a new surveillance aircraft to pick out ground targets at extended ranges.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com

www.thedrive.com

Unwanted British Sentinel Radar Planes To Be Picked Up By US Army: Report

The Sentinel Airborne Stand-Off Radar aircraft, controversially retired earlier this year, may now be headed to the United States.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com

ukdefencejournal.org.uk

Retired British Sentinel aircraft to be sold to U.S.

Britain's retired fleet of Sentinel aircraft is to be sold to the U.S. Army and flown to the United States.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk ukdefencejournal.org.uk

I can already hear the bickering between the Army and Airforce if this deal goes ahead.
 
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The US Army already has the ARTEMIS so these will basically work alongside that on similar ISR missions if this goes through. It could also be a company owned offering.
 
bring_it_on said:
The US Army already has the ARTEMIS so these will basically work alongside that on similar ISR missions if this goes through. It could also be a company owned offering.
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They just started testing ARES, same sensor package on the Global 6000/6500 airframe. Possibly these are destined to be rebuilt to that standard?

US Army ARES ISR aircraft makes maiden flight

The US Army's Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) aircraft made its maiden flight in late August, prime contractor L3Harris announced.
www.janes.com
 
mitchellinstituteaerospaceadvantage.podbean.com

2021-10 | The Aerospace Advantage

The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies is proud to present The Aerospace Advantage, with former Air Force weapons school instructor and Thunderbird Lt Col (ret) John “Slick” Baum as the host. Every week, Slick will take listeners into the world of ae...
mitchellinstituteaerospaceadvantage.podbean.com mitchellinstituteaerospaceadvantage.podbean.com

Some ABMS, JSTARS, AWACS replacement discussion at the end. Some controversial discussion about defense against FOBS as well. Appears the Russians are working on as well. Once again the need to boost phase intercept...IMHO needs to be pre-boost.
 
E-6 retirement gets a bit more irreversible:

The layoffs are a result of the U.S. Air Force’s decision to retire the Joint STARS fleet, he said.

”That was a pretty big chunk of the work we did here,” Krull said.

Joint STARS aircraft are used by the military in surveillance of moving targets on the ground, but the fleet is expected to be retired in the mid 2020′s and will not be replaced, according to Military.com. The military is working to move to new surveillance systems.

The fleet will be in service through 2024, Krull said.
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www.kplctv.com

Northrop Grumman laying off 120 workers in Lake Charles

Officials say the layoffs are a result of the U.S. Air Force’s decision to retire the Joint STARS surveillance fleet.
www.kplctv.com www.kplctv.com
 
Here is what happened and where we are now.

PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HEARING DATE/TIME: May 2, 2019, 9:00 A.M.

ADVANCED BATTLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
As I testified last year, our adversaries continue to field capabilities that threaten the survivability and viability of our large-body high-value airborne assets used for battle management, command, and control by forcing these aircraft outside of their effective ranges. The increasing threat has created challenges and risk across our Air Battle Management fleet, including the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) that will remain until the Air Force fields the Advanced Battle Management System with equal or greater capability. In the interim, the Joint Requirement Oversight Council has acknowledged the United States Air Force’s risk mitigation strategy relating to JSTARS Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) in accordance with 2019 NDAA.
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Rather than quote every congressional discussion regarding the end of JSTARS recapitialization and the immediate "successor" here I will summarize:

The Air Force terminated the recapitialization effort (i.e. "Joint STARS replacement aircraft") in 2019 with the "plan" of ABMS being the replacement. E-8C and RQ-4 were supposed to be the "bridge" to the introduction of ABMS. Congress though was concerned that the Air Force was going with this plan as they had no actual GMTI component of the ABMS system of systems defined and were just using the (old) JSTARS requirements in places. ABMS has not yet fielded any hardware as of 2024 and yet both E-8C and RQ-4 are pretty much already gone.

So that went about like this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC8qrH3Zwog


However....

Department of the Air Force Posture Statement Fiscal Year 2023, Department of the Air Force Presentation to the Committees and Subcommittees of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, 2nd Session, 117th Congress, May 13, 2022

The ability to prosecute targets in advance of our adversaries is pivotal to the C2 advantages the Air Force currently holds. The current Air Force C2 architecture, including the AWACS and JSTARS platforms, is aging, analog, and vulnerable to failure or attack through kinetic or non-kinetic means. The Fiscal Year 2023 budget divests a significant portion of both the AWACS and JSTARS fleets while pursuing and funding a replacement to close the Air MTI gap while a resilient long-term solution is identified.
Detecting, tracking, monitoring, and striking moving targets at scale is a requirement in modern warfare. The Air Force’s legacy Airborne Moving Target Indicator and Ground Moving Target Indicator (AMTI/GMTI) capabilities will be neither effective nor survivable in highly-contested environments. The Air Force must be able to operate in radar-jamming environments, detect low-observable and hypersonic threats, and survive. This operational imperative must integrate with ABMS in order to share and take advantage of information at operationally-required speeds across all domains. The Fiscal Year 2023 budget supports this imperative through investments in future air and space capabilities as well as upgrades to existing ones. The Air Force will also leverage key allies’ capabilities and systems to engage
multiple mobile targets in the air, on the sea surface, and on the ground.
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PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HEARING DATE/TIME: March 29, 2023, 3:30 P.M.

The Air Force plans to divest Block 40 in FY27, as we continue to develop space-based Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) to meet Combatant Commander’s needs in accordance with the NDS. The reduced investment in the RQ-4 also enables the Department to better align resources with the NDS.
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DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC FORCES UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

FY25 Space Budget Hearing,Honorable Frank Calvelli, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, May 1, 2024

In collaboration with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), we are developing a ground moving target indicator (GMTI) solution to meet Combatant Command requirements. This capability will provide actionable information on adversary surface targets that the Space Force will deliver to the Joint Force. We selected this partnership with the NRO because their concept allows us to go faster, with less technical risk, and at lower cost. Again, acquisition speed is a top factor in our decision-making, and the partnership with the NRO allows us to develop space-based GMTI faster. Milestone B for this program will take place later this year.
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Lamborn Opening Statement at Hearing on Fy25 Budget Request for DOD Space Programs, May 1, 2024

For example, I am concerned about how we get space-based information into the hands of the warfighters on a tactically relevant timeline. Given the retirement of the JSTARS platform beginning in the mid-2020s, the Department decided in the FY23 budget request to transition Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) from an air platform to a space-based capability.
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Testimony of Dr. Christopher J. Scolese, Director, National Reconnaissance Office, House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Hearing on “Fiscal Year 2024 National Security Space Programs”, Wednesday April 26, 2023

Today the NRO and Space Force are working hand-in-hand to shape the future of Ground Moving Target Indicators (GMTI), which will provide day, night, all weather detection and tracking of ground and maritime targets for the warfighter. Working with the Space Force and other military services, the NRO’s flexible acquisition approaches will allow us to develop and acquire reliable and resilient GMTI systems at speed, delivering this critical capability to the warfighter, for the warfighter, in the very near future.
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(and dozens more like the above. USAF has been very vocal with Congress, which is all public record)

So the plan, at this point, is that Space Force and NRO will at some point in the future a space-based GMTI capability (as well as space-based "AEW" replacing E-3 / E-7) and that will be integrated with ABMS.
 
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quellish said:
Here is what happened and where we are now.

PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HEARING DATE/TIME: May 2, 2019, 9:00 A.M.



Rather than quote every congressional discussion regarding the end of JSTARS recapitialization and the immediate "successor" here I will summarize:

The Air Force terminated the recapitialization effort (i.e. "Joint STARS replacement aircraft") in 2019 with the "plan" of ABMS being the replacement. E-8C and RQ-4 were supposed to be the "bridge" to the introduction of ABMS. Congress though was concerned that the Air Force was going with this plan as they had no actual GMTI component of the ABMS system of systems defined and were just using the (old) JSTARS requirements in places. ABMS has not yet fielded any hardware as of 2024 and yet both E-8C and RQ-4 are pretty much already gone.

So that went about like this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC8qrH3Zwog


However....

Department of the Air Force Posture Statement Fiscal Year 2023, Department of the Air Force Presentation to the Committees and Subcommittees of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, 2nd Session, 117th Congress, May 13, 2022



PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TACTICAL AIR AND LAND FORCES, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HEARING DATE/TIME: March 29, 2023, 3:30 P.M.



DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC FORCES UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

FY25 Space Budget Hearing,Honorable Frank Calvelli, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, May 1, 2024



Lamborn Opening Statement at Hearing on Fy25 Budget Request for DOD Space Programs, May 1, 2024



Testimony of Dr. Christopher J. Scolese, Director, National Reconnaissance Office, House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Hearing on “Fiscal Year 2024 National Security Space Programs”, Wednesday April 26, 2023



(and dozens more like the above. USAF has been very vocal with Congress, which is all public record)

So the plan, at this point, is that Space Force and NRO will at some point in the future a space-based GMTI capability (as well as space-based "AEW" replacing E-3 / E-7) and that will be integrated with ABMS.
Click to expand...

Thank you. So my understanding is that the JSTARS did not have a direct capability replacement when retired and we hope to have it in space-based form "soon." Well, fingers crossed, I guess.
 
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TomS said:
So my understanding is that the JSTARS did not have a direct capability replacement when retired and we hope to have it in space-based form "soon." Well, fingers crossed, I guess.
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It will still be ABMS-- being fed by everything, including but not limited to space-based sensors. They need ABMS to filter the data to the relevant parties and decide who needs to see what. C2 is the primary function being replaced. The Surveillance Targeting and Radar bits of the JSTAR is being distributed to "netcentric" sensors.
 
quellish said:
In collaboration with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), we are developing a ground moving target indicator (GMTI) solution to meet Combatant Command requirements.
Click to expand...

NRO implies it is space based, but wouldn't you have to have a Starlink sized fleet of these so you don't have to wait for next pass to get another snapshot? Or is the ABMS requirement for not even close to realtime snapshot?
 

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