Sep 24, 2024
2024-09-24 USAF Building New Site for Testing B-2 Flight Component RCS using RAZR
USAF Building New Site for Testing B-2 Flight Component RCS and Antenna Calibration
By Frank Wolfe | September 19, 2024 - Avionics International
By September next year, the U.S. Air Force is to establish a new Composite Aircraft Antenna Calibration Facility (CAACF) at Hill AFB, Utah for testing flight components’ radar cross section (RCS) and antenna calibration of the Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber.
The 309th Maintenance Support Group at Ogden Air Logistics Complex is adapting the Resonant Adaptive Zonal Radar (RAZR) to test B-2 RCS at Ogden, while the Air Force builds CAACF.
Resonant Sciences, a small business in Beavercreek, Ohio outside Dayton, builds RAZR–a robotic monitor that depot and field mechanics use after a B-2 mission to inspect the aircraft’s composite material to pinpoint areas that need repair.
RAZR has been among B-2 program efforts that have saved 15,000 maintenance man hours per year, Scott Carlson, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s deputy system program officer for the B-2, said in July.
In the last two years, the Air Force has funded seven RAZRs.
“The CAACF will be a dual use facility for RCS testing of B-2 flight control components and for calibrating composite aircraft antennas,” according to a Wednesday business notice. “Hill AFB procured the RAZR to be used with the B-2 composite flight control surfaces RCS testing. This SOW [statement of work] pertains to the new RCS system to be used for the B-2 RCS testing.”
The B-2 program has said that it wants to reduce low-observable (LO) maintenance costs and time, which reduced the stealth bomber’s mission capable rate to 56 percent last year (Defense Daily, Aug. 2). The LO effort comes under the B-2’s Low Observable Signature and Supportable Modifications (LOSSM) relatively scant funding line. In fiscal 2025, the Air Force requested $1 million for LOSSM, which the service said “supports the B-2 ability to penetrate anti-access combat environments, performing missions directed by the National Command Authority while ensuring aircrew survivability.”
Avionics International
A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.