Hanscom team works to upgrade airborne comm for top U.S. officials

Published July 8, 2009
By Chuck Paone
66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. -- A Hanscom team is working to acquire a comprehensive system that will provide highly reliable, secure and integrated voice, data, and video equipment for airborne U.S. senior leaders.

Those leaders include the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, numerous senior military officials and others who travel world-wide aboard a fleet of 20 special aircraft. While on board they must be able to carry out their official, day-to-day duties and respond to emergency situations.

Program office officials here are due to release a request for proposal, or RFP, next month. They'll be looking for the best and most cost-effective solution for building a standardized command, control and communications (C3) system for the fleet, said Karl Gregor, deputy program manager for the Senior Leadership C3 System - Airborne Communications Program, referred to as SCP.

The current fleet includes the C 20, C-37, C 32 and C 40. Now, each aircraft type comes with its own unique communications suite, said Mike Mason, a member of the program office team.

"There is no standard, back-end communications architecture across the fleet, and thus no standard capabilities and functionality," he said. Those capabilities are used for situational awareness, reaching back to home station resources, collaboration and command and control.

Some variances depending on the size and type of aircraft are expected, but program officials are striving for a standard configuration, according to George Lewis, lead engineer for the program. That means outfitting the entire fleet with a common, scalable, modular, open architecture communications suite.

Specific hardware would include new routers, secure phones, video teleconferencing equipment, monitors and more.

The team hopes to field the first package, on a C-37 (Gulfstream G-5), during 2011.

Because fielding on these critical assets can only be accomplished in depot when they've been brought in for scheduled maintenance anyway - and because there are so few of each type that in some cases no more than one per year can be taken out of operation - the entire fielding effort will likely run through 2015 or '16, Mr. Gregor said.

One thing that helps is the availability of a modified KC-135 known as Test Tanker II. Though primarily a test asset, the plane also occasionally doubles as a transit platform for top Air Force leaders.

"That allows us to combine our testing with actual senior leader travel, and to get some significant feedback from them," said Mr. Mason. It also eliminates the need to take an operational platform out of the field for testing.

The Test Tanker II crew brought the platform to Hanscom late in June, so that program officials and interested contractors could get a first-hand look. Built in 1963 and now operating out of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., the aircraft is used for aerial refueling support at the Air Force Flight Test Center and as a platform for testing avionics, as well as for testing senior leader communications systems.

"Test Tanker II allows senior leaders to test out advances before they're installed on operational jets," said Lt. Col. Jordan Kriss, commander of the 412th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards.

In addition to SCP, the aircraft is also supporting two other Electronic Systems Center programs, the Roll-on/Roll-off Beyond Line of Sight program known as ROBE and a data link program referred to as Combat Track II, Colonel Kriss said.