Northrop Grumman, L3Harris lock horns for Polish F-16 EW package

KIELCE, Poland — As Poland looks to make significant upgrades to its F-16 fleet, two American firms here are vying to offer their electronic warfare suites as part of the broader package.

While it’s still unclear exactly what Warsaw will require of its upgrade, meant to bring its aircraft from the Block 50 configuration to the more advanced Block 70, Northrop Grumman says it has pitched the AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS), while L3Harris is offering the AN/ALQ-254(V)1 Viper Shield.

Both companies told Breaking Defense at the MSPO show today that Poland plans on making a selection for the a new EW package in the next six months. (Poland’s Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to an after-hours request for comment.)

IVEWS, the US Air Force’s F-16 EW program of record, uses an ultra wideband architecture designed to detect, identify and counter radio frequency threats. It is also “four times more sensitive and [able to offer] four times wider range than any previous system employed” in the fourth-generation aircraft, said Charles Blanks, fixed wing survivability manager at Northrop Grumman. “That allows detection of all of the new generation and future generation threats that have moved out of the typical electronic spectrum” of the past.

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He added that the system “is needed on fourth-generation fighters against near-peer threats out there now, and Poland, more than any other country, knows [those threats] are on the doorstep.”

As it happens, IVEWS was formally cleared today to begin US Air Force F-16 flight testing, after three years of system level and anechoic chamber testing, mainly out of the Joint Preflight Integration of Munitions and Electronic Sensors (J-PRIMES) facility. Blanks claimed that based on those sorts of tests, which also included interference tests, IVEWS was credited with a “98 percent success rate.”

James Ryan, director of business development at L3Harris, said “a lot of different solutions are currently in play, [and] ours [Viper Shield] is the most mature of the group.” He stressed the system is the “only fully funded solution that is currently in production, and we’re looking forward to the selection [decision] from Poland.”

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Viper Shield is an all-digital EW suite for the F-16 that, according to L3Harris company literature, offers “enhanced system performance, a smaller form factor, reduced weight and easier future upgrades.”

Ryan said Viper Shield meets all technical requirements set out by Warsaw and has been previously ordered by “multiple” export orders.

At a platform level, Poland has still to define the scope of the F-16 upgrade, but various reports in February said that it is preparing to strike an agreement with the US government. Northrop’s Blanks said that Warsaw had initially evaluated other EW solutions, but it has since “narrowed” the competitive field to IVEWS and Viper Shield.