A US Marine Corps F/A-18D carrying centreline Litening advanced targeting pod. (US Navy)
The US Marine Corps (USMC) and Northrop Grumman are teaming up to upgrade the corps' AN/AAQ-28(V) Litening electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) targeting pod.
The modernisation effort, which company officials announced on 5 December, will focus on integration of the Bandwidth Efficient Common Data Link (BE CDL) waveform into the targeting pod for the first time. Once complete, the Advanced Tactical Data Link (ATDL) variant of the Litening pod will be the first EO/IR targeting pod to feature BE CDL waveform capability aboard a tactical aircraft, according to the 5 December statement.
The BE CDL-equipped Litening pods will allow for “secure, two-way, multiband” datalink connectivity, which will support air-to-ground transmissions of video, imagery, and metadata, company officials said in the statement. Regarding video feeds specifically, the enhanced Litening pod variant will also allow viewing of a single video feed by USMC aviators and ground forces simultaneously, they added.
Prior to the BE CDL waveform, legacy variants of the targeting pod featured the NET-T cross-domain datalink as well as Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) capability.
“The ATDL enhancement is like upgrading to better Wi-Fi by building on Litening's already proven datalinks, making live feeds immediately available on the ground,” said James Conroy, Northrop Grumman's vice-president for navigation, targeting, and survivability. The targeting pod is currently deployed aboard the USMC's fleet of F/A-18 attack aircraft.
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