With Its Badly Needed Terrain Following Radar Installed
Lockheed Martin has launched a video showing one of the first MC-130J Commando II unique operations transports equipped with the Raytheon AN/APQ-187 Silent Knight terrain-following/terrain avoidance radar. The U.S. Air Force plans to upgrade the entire Commando II fleet to this new configuration in the coming years, giving the planes a nap-of-the-earth flight functionality that is important for their special operations missions but lacked because of their creation nearly a decade ago.
By 2018, the Air Force had a minimum of MC-130Js geared up with the Silent Knight Radar, or SKR, in line with Pentagon price range files. In its most recent financial request for the 2020 Fiscal Year, the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), in charge of shopping SKRs for Air Force Special Operations Command, asked for almost $9 million to purchase radars-related equipment and aid offerings. AFSOC expects to, in the end, receive more significance than 70 Commando IIs, all of which might be set to accept the brand-new radar.
“The software will not simply combine that new radar; however, it will even evolve the [MC-130J’s] virtual cockpit to automate important functions,” Paul Keith, Lockheed Martin’s Program Manager for the MC-130J Common Terrain Following/Terrain Avoidance Radar (MCTF) application, said in the new video. “This will allow a smaller AFSOC crew to do as a whole lot or even more than present-day crews can do.”
SKR is an outstanding multi-feature radar in its own proper, with terrain-following/terrain avoidance, climate, and ground mapping modes. It works over any terrain, with sand, ice, snow, and maritime environments. SOCOM’s necessities called for it to paintings at altitudes from a hundred to at least,000 feet in degree or turning flight and at speeds from five to 300 knots, or between 6 and 345 miles consistent with hour.
The radar operates on K-band and has low intercept (LPI) and low detection (LPD) capabilities. This is critical attention for special operations missions that often contain penetrating denied regions. If the enemy detected the radar passively in or near their airspace, it could remove the MC-130J’s presence and compromise its challenge and survivability. The terrain-observe and terrain avoidance capability allows shallow nap-of-the-earth flight profiles in bad weather and at night to prevent and avoid adverse air defenses.
SOCOM started the SKR program in the past due 2000s to expand a brand new terrain-following/terrain avoidance radar for the special operations MH-forty seven Chinooks and MH-60 Black Hawks assigned to the Army’s elite one hundred and sixtieth Special Operations Regiment. Since then, however, the attempt has evolved, with plans now for the radar to emerge as a not unusual gadget for those helicopters, in addition to the Air Force’s special operations CV-22B Osprey tilt-rotors and the MC-130J.
Silent Knight offers sizable benefits for every one of these systems. However, it is an incredibly essential improvement for the Commando II. AFSOC’s MC-a hundred thirty fleets as a whole, including the MC-130H Combat Talon II, are facing increasing challenges as ever-enhancing risk air protection abilties continue to emerge and grow worldwide.
For many years now, AFSOC and different components of the Air Force have been investigating an extensive selection of potentially extra survivable substitute options, including stealth delivery aircraft and numerous upgrades to ensure the MC-130 platform remains applicable in the coming years. The War Zone recently finished a significant -component feature on those traits, which you can find here and here.
In the meantime, terrain-following ter, rain avoidance skills, and nap-of-the-earth flight profiles continue to be crucial to the capability of MC-130s to finish their missions. So, shockingly, the Air Force took transport of the primary MC-130Js in 2011 and placed the first examples into the operational carrier the following 12 months without such functionality.
