Navy-Air Force plan to modernize electronic warfare is 'unconvincing'.

• Author: Byrne, Lena

The Navy and the Air Force are working to merge divergent nation's electronic-jamming air-visions on how to modernize the craft. Despite differences in their approaches to fielding a new generation of jammers, high-level Pentagon leaders told the services to work out a compromise, because time is running out on the Prowler.

The Prowler, the Defense Department's only tactical radar-jamming airplane, is experiencing a much higher rate of use than was ever planned. It is now the oldest airplane in the U.S. Navy, with an average age of 20.3 years.

The Navy EA-6B Prowler's primary mission is to protect strike aircraft by electronically disrupting or destroying enemy radars and communications. Since the airplane flies strike-support missions for the Marines and Air Force, the replacement plan must account for each service's needs.

After a two-year, $16 million analysis-of-alternatives study, the Navy recommended that the aging Prowlers be replaced, beginning in 2010, with the EA-18, a modified F/A-18F Super Hornet. The Air Force, however, was not sold on the plan, claiming it focused too much on replacing the Prowler with another manned aircraft and did not take a big-picture view of electronic-warfare requirements.

Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper had voiced objections earlier this year about the Analysis of Alternatives study. He essentially charged that the AOA was a recommendation to replace one aircraft with another, and was not considering "other elements of network warfare, ... expendable jammers, tow-decoys, and other things that go into helping you solve this problem." The Air Force also wants to include the B-52 long-range bomber and the X-45 unmanned combat vehicle (UCAV) in the mix of potential electronic-jamming platforms.

Officials from both services briefed their electronic-warfare plans in June to Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Edward 'Pete' Aldridge.

Aldridge said he was not impressed by the options presented during that briefing. "I wouldn't say I was unhappy," he said. "I would say that it was not convincing."

The plan brought forward, Aldridge said, had "an Air Force solution and a Navy solution rather than a U.S. Defense Department solution. ... The Air Force had its direction, and the Navy had theirs.

To some degree, Aldridge sided with Jumper's view that the Navy was taking a narrow approach. "We need to focus on the problem we are trying to solve rather than the platform we need to solve the problem with," he said. "We are after the same threat. Why do we have to worry about whether it's this airplane or that airplane? Why don't we build the capability to go after that threat, and we can put it on any aircraft?"

This fall, the Defense Department started working on another electronic-warfare study as part of the "defense-planning guidance" for the fiscal 2004-2009 spending plan. Unofficial budget reports said the Navy plans to request up to $4 billion for 2004-2009 to buy the EA-18. Last month, Boeing received a $5 million contract to begin "risk reduction" work on the aircraft.

"There are other alternatives being considered," besides the EA-18, said Aldridge. He suggested that the Pentagon might support the development of an electronic pod system "that would do that job and that would be carried on any type of aircraft, either Navy or Air Force."

The heads of aviation...