Comms between 5th and 4th generation airframes.

The Air Force is among a group of Defense Department sponsors of the Joint Strike Fighter Enterprise Terminal (JETpack) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) program, a research project designed to demonstrate reasonably mature and producible technologies to solve this problem. Northrop Grumman is the lead contractor on the JETpack program. The company declined to comment on the project, citing sensitivities with customers.

That was way back in the boonies of 2013

Aviation


Then

Lockheed Martin, by contrast, has demonstrated the ability to use a new waveform developed by L-3 Communications called Chameleon for direct communications among F-22s and F-35s without the use of a gateway. Lockheed Martin demonstrated Chameleon during flight trials in December; officials say signal strength remained under the detection threshold for an anti-access environment and the waveform can be transmitted via L-band antennas already on both platforms and only used for operations now at test ranges.

Aviation


Those LM ladies and Lads worked blisteringly fast.

“We successfully integrated an F-22 with a Rockwell Collins tactical radio for Link 16 transmit and receive capability, and two L-3 Communications devices to support encrypted and secure operations,” said Ron Bessire, vice president of Program and Technology Integration at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®. “The rapid integration of this equipment enabled secure information sharing between stealth and legacy platforms and improved overall battlespace awareness.”

To reduce integration timelines, the Project Missouri team leveraged open systems architecture tools from the Air Force’s Common Mission Control Center and from the unmanned aerial systems command and control standard initiative (UCI) to complete hardware and software development in less than seven months, with integration and test taking less than 30 days. This included acquiring safety of flight and airworthiness approval for flight test. The team achieved up to a 60 percent reduction in the development, integration and test timelines.

Lockheed Martin

Interesting little snippets like this lead to a whole world of other corridors of interest for those who travel down them. X and L band comms from LM, Boeing and NG, High speed high bandwidth lasers from Northrop..

a reply to: Astr0

It's about damn time. That was always the thing that drove me up the wall. All this money for the F-22, and they had to develop a new platform (BACN), for them to even talk to anyone.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Astr0

It's about damn time. That was always the thing that drove me up the wall. All this money for the F-22, and they had to develop a new platform (BACN), for them to even talk to anyone.

Some one 'out there' has a platform that can talk to others (and satellites) utilising a 2 Gigabyte a second transfer rate. " Gb a second.

That's a lot of instructions and commands for an unmanned flying wing with large sensors.

a reply to: Astr0

I'll take one of those for my home internet connection please.

I call BS on heaps of these threads and I am getting pretty sick of them in the aircraft forum.

Ive worked in Defence Procurement for years, guess who leads the way the way in video compression? It isnt the military.

Guess who leads the way in software encription, virus and other computer stuff...it isnt the military and it isnt the US military.

Just to put another slant on it, every child born who moves through computer programming and the like in their schooling, millions of brains, do not work for the US, some do, but not many.

I would challenge that a few billion customer base available to google would be behind the technology of a 2gb per second AMERICAN military dream.

No and No....this forum is fast becoming a make believe pro American dream fest, a willy waving forum and whilst I dont approve of the xenophobic rants of some, the pie in the sky claims, unsubstantiated and frivolous quotes are making a mokary of this forum.

a reply to: IamSirDrinksalot

Guess who also leads the way in laser communications, among other things (it ain't NASA). The LADEE satellite that NASA sent to the moon with a laser comms system could transfer 0.6 GBps from the moon using lasers.

It's also amazing how many of these "pie in the sky" threads end up bearing fruit.

originally posted by: IamSirDrinksalot
I call BS on heaps of these threads and I am getting pretty sick of them in the aircraft forum.

Time to man up and issue that apology.

“We’re talking data rates that can be 100 to 1,000 times or more greater than what you can get with [radio frequency] data links,” said Michael Perry, vice president of the laser-electric optic business unit in General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.'s reconnaissance systems group. The UAV maker is partnering with a German satellite company to demonstrate laser links between a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft and a satellite in geo-stationary orbit some 25,000 miles above the Earth.

The finite amount of radio spectrum available to the U.S. military has been an ongoing issue. At the same time, the demand for it is insatiable. The advent of unmanned aerial vehicles that need to send live, streaming video to bases around the world has driven the high demand, and forced the military to lease time on commercial satellites. The demand is likely to increase as higher resolution, next-generation sensors that require more bandwidth proliferate in the coming years.

The overcrowded airwaves are also prone to interference, or “fratricide” as radio engineers like to call it. Adversaries can also try to intercept messages or jam signals.

Laser communications do not use any of the radio spectrum. And, advocates point out, it is inherently protected. To disrupt a transmission, an enemy would have to be able to detect the narrow beam and find a way to put an object in front of it. To actually intercept data, he would have to place a receiver in its path.

In its simplest form, the energy is transmitted in pulses with the “1” digit being a pulse and the “0” a gap. But modulating the timing can create more sophisticated pulses.

Perry described it as: “Morse code but at ridiculously high rates.”

How high? Two gigabytes per second and upwards of 20 gigabytes per second are possible, he said.

Whoops a daisy. Whoops a mutt trucking daisy. Right there is your slap down. Wind your neck in and get back in that box.

Laser 2GB a second

Ive worked in Defence Procurement for years

Well, if you are that embroiled into our field, how come you know so little?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooo!!

Laser communications at high speeds between UAVs and Submarines? say it ain't so Joe!

Submarine communications have always been problematic, largely because radio waves are unable to penetrate sea water. As a result, links between submarines and other warships or airplanes have had to rely on unconventional means such as trailing wires or towed buoys – compromising the ability of a submarine to remain stealthy.

However, blue and blue-green laser wavelengths penetrate sea water very effectively, and this technology has long been seen as a way to improve submarine communications. One of the key technological stumbling blocks has been the laser transmitter. To produce the high-energy blue beams required for effective communication has previously required a Raman-shifted XeCl excimer laser, or a frequency-doubled Ti: sapphire source, both of which are regarded as too bulky, inefficient and impractical for the application.

But now that DARPA has developed blue solid-state lasers and cesium atomic line filters (ALFs) to produce emission at 455 nm and 459 nm, the Agency feels that the key component technologies are sufficiently advanced to feature in an operational defense system.

Of its “SEADEEP” system, QinetiQ claims that the approach has already “demonstrated communications through the air-water interface equivalent to data rates available with wideband Internet communications at home”. Such speeds would be hundreds to thousands of times faster than conventional submarine communications at depth, the company adds.

sirdrinkalot knows so little its scary


Lasers lasers everywhere, not a drop intercepted.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Goddammit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More high speed high bandwidth laser goodness

Its just the synopsis, but it should verify that this is genuine defence related research.

Real life - you know, the stuff you should be aware of because it'll effect procurement in the next three to ten years.

The verification results show that this technology is suitable not only for space applications but also for applications in the troposphere. After a brief description of the Laser Communication Terminal (LCT) for space applications, the paper consequently discusses the future utilization of satellite-based optical data links for Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) operations of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). It is shown that the use of optical frequencies is the only logical consequence of an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth. In terms of Network Centric Warfare it is highly recommended that Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) of the future should incorporate that technology which allows almost unlimited bandwidth.

GTFBIYB. B.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LASERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LASERS DRINKALOT MORE LASERS!

AOA Xinetics has developed compact atmospheric compensation systems for horizontal path laser communications, including both ground based and airborne implementations. We have also developed and demonstrated several stochastic adaptive optics approaches that address the problems of severe turbulence along the beam path.

Seriously now Sirdrinkalot, you can keep your apology as I got you weighed, measured, and found wanting.

a reply to: Astr0

And then one may wonder "gee, how do they know where to point the laser if the sub is supposed to be hiding".

mirror mirror on the wall, whose phase conjugate waveform nonlinearly self amplifies the most of them all?

This stuff is the closest to Star Trek technology I've ever seen in the open.

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: Astr0

And then one may wonder "gee, how do they know where to point the laser if the sub is supposed to be hiding".

mirror mirror on the wall, whose phase conjugate waveform nonlinearly self amplifies the most of them all?

This stuff is the closest to Star Trek technology I've ever seen in the open.

If any one see's an unmanned aerial vehicle with what looks like great big black bug eyes on the sides, here is the reason why.

They don't even have to have a transmitter inside the UAV for the newest technology - they simply change the incoming energy and send back a differing message.

Its very exciting times.

(Sirdrinkalot, modulating retro reflector is the term you need to google for lots and lots of information. I'd hurry as the Aussie Navy are already doing line of sight video / voice trials. Procurements gonna pick up rapidly)

Researchers representing four research disciplines at the Naval Research Laboratory received the Lt. Gen. Gordon T. Gould, Jr. MILCOM 2010 award for Best Classified Paper for their paper entitled "Lasercom for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Using a Modulating Retro-Reflector." The award is named for Lt. Gen Gordon T. Gould, Jr., a distinguished Air Force officer who held the position as Director of the Defense Communications Agency from 1971-1974.

The project leader, Dr. Peter Goetz, accepted the award at the Technical Chairman's Awards Banquet of the MILCOM 2010 conference. Wade Freeman with the Dakota UAV and NRL MRR lasercom wingpods.

The NRL team designed and built free-space laser communication (lasercom) terminals for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using modulating retro-reflector (MRR) technology. MRRs enable the use of lasercom on platforms which are too small to carry a conventional lasercom terminal, or which would otherwise be incapable of achieving the pointing accuracy required for conventional lasercom.

The research team designed and built MRR lasercom terminals that were flown and demonstrated on a Dakota UAV as wing-pods and subsequently tested on a smaller UAV. A bi-directional lasercom ethernet link was established, and live video and data files were transferred.

Sirdrinkalot I did your research for you see this NRL Navy link