Game Changer! DTP-N and TTNT, combined with the IRST Block II sensor allows Block III Super Hornets to engage enemy stealth aircraft from well beyond visual range....

Thanks to Super Rhino for the link!

via National Interest.

The Block III Super Hornet aircraft incorporates a host of new capabilities ranging from an upgraded 9000-hour airframe, new range-extending conformal fuel tanks (~120 nautical mile boost in mission radius), radar cross-section improvements, enhanced satellite communications, to a new advanced cockpit display system. But the two most significant developments are the addition of the Distributed Targeting Processor-Networked (DTP-N) computer—which exponentially increases the Super Hornet’s processing power—and the high-speed, high-bandwidth, high-throughput anti-jam Internet Protocol-based Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) datalink.

When the power of the DTP-N and TTNT are combined with the IRST Block II sensor, the resulting capability allows for a pair of Block III Super Hornets to engage enemy stealth aircraft from well beyond visual range—far beyond the range of the jets’ Raytheon AN/APG-79 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.

As Gillian explained, while the IRST Block II is not part of the Block III program, the advanced processing, datalinks and sensor-fused display onboard the new Super Hornet variant enable the new capabilities envisioned for the new sensor.  As Bob Kornegay, Boeing’s capture team leader for domestic F/A-18E/F and EA-18G programs, explains, the critical Common Tactical Picture sensor-fused display will be enabled by the Block III aircraft’s powerful high speed anti-jam TTNT datalink and the sheer computing power of the DTP-N processor, which is needed to run the complex algorithms that make multi-aircraft data-fusion possible.

What makes the new IRST particularly capable is that it operates in the long wave infrared band, which allows the sensor to passively detect and track targets well beyond the range of the APG-79 radar. “It can see a hot airplane,” Kornegay said. “It has much longer range—it is a long wave long range IRST—so it can see much further than radar can.”

Story here.