Naomi Cooper
Boeing and the U.S. Navy have jointly demonstrated the ability of a Block III F/A-18 Super Hornet jet to connect with and control three unmanned aerial vehicles.
Company engineers, within six months, developed, installed and tested new software loads of the aircraft’s Distributed Targeting Processor – Networked, which transmitted commands to the UAVs via a third-party tablet, Boeing said Friday.
During the two-week manned-unmanned teaming test, the tablet processed command inputs from F/A-18 pilots and transmitted them through the jet’s hardware system.
“As part of a Joint All-Domain Command and Control network, teams of UAV conducting ISR missions led by the latest Super Hornets equipped with network-enabled data fusion and advanced capabilities would provide warfighters across the Joint Force with significant information advantage,” said Scott Dickson, director for multidomain integration at Boeing.
The flight test was conducted in collaboration with several U.S. Navy organizations, including the F/A-18 and EA-18G Program Office, Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division and Air Test and Evaluation Squadrons 23 and 31.
The Navy received the first Block III F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft from Boeing in September 2021.
