F/A-18 Distributed Targeting System has first flight
NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND, PATUXENT RIVER, Md. -- An F/A-18F Super Hornet equipped with the Distributed Targeting System completed its first one-hour test flight Sept. 1 at Naval Air Station China Lake, Calif.
The system is part of the U.S. Navy’s F/A-18E/F Network Centric Warfare Upgrades program and F/A-18E/F flight plan, a program designed to ensure that the Block II Super Hornet will stay ahead of known and emerging threats through 2025 and beyond.
“This is a major architectural implementation for the flight plan upgrade,” said Capt. Mark Darrah, F/A-18 and EA-18G program manager. “It will be a huge enhancement to the F/A-18 fleet aircraft.”
The DTS itself is a hardware and software system designed to provide precision strike capability against relocatable, targets, such as mobile surface-to-air missile units. The system uses sensor imagery gathered from the radar or infrared signatures emitted by potential targets. It then compares those images to references stored within DTS to determine if the target is a threat.

The system is designed to reduce the time it takes to search, identify, classify, pinpoint and attack a target as well as assess the damage to the target, a process also known as the kill chain. With onboard communications, a single aircraft equipped with DTS can provide multiple target points to other aircraft. Without this capability, each aircraft derives individual coordinates on each target.

“DTS provides real time precision strike capability to the warfighter, where no similar capability exists today,” said Darrah. “This ability to strike mobile threat targets with precision minimizes collateral damage to supporting ground forces in close contact.”

The DTS program, which will be fielded on all Block II F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, began in 2004. Initial operational capability is slated for fall 2012 with operational fielding in 2013.

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Flight -- The F/A-18F Super Hornet equipped with the Distributed Targeting System prepares for its first flight. (U.S. Navy Photo)