Northrop Grumman wins contract to install next-gen EW suite on F-16.

According to a PR published by Northrop Grumman Corporation on May 3, 2022, the company has received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to continue preparing the AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS) for developmental test and full hardware qualification.

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 US Air Force's F-16 fighter aircraft (Picture source: U.S. DoD)

Northrop Grumman is preparing IVEWS for a series of hardware and software verification tests leading up to F-16 flights planned for later in 2022. The company will also continue the development of the infrastructure needed to move the system to production once testing is complete.

In 2021, the company’s IVEWS and AN/APG-83 SABR radar demonstrated pulse-to-pulse interoperability at the Northern Lightning joint exercise, operating against a range of airborne and ground-based threats.

IVEWS leverages an open-systems, ultra-wideband architecture, providing the instantaneous bandwidth needed to defeat modern threats. This F-16 system is part of a mature product line of electronic warfare capabilities that can be adapted to virtually any platform.

The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF).

Highly agile, the F-16 was the first fighter aircraft purpose-built to pull 9-g maneuvers and can reach a maximum speed of over Mach 2.

Early F-16s could be armed with up to six AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking short-range air-to-air missiles (AAM) by employing rail launchers on each wingtip, as well as radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow medium-range AAMs in a weapons mix.