Cordoba RES-282 Shogun
| RES-282 Shogun | |
|---|---|
| |
| Profile diagram of the RES-282 Shogun. | |
| Role | Airborne early warning and control |
| National origin |  Carthage
|
| Manufacturer | Cordoba Aerospace |
| Designer | Cordoba Aerospace |
| First flight | 2013 |
| Introduction | 2014 |
| Status | In service, in production |
| Primary user | Carthage Air Forces |
| Number built | 24 |
| Program cost | NSD$12 billion |
| Unit cost |
NSD$443 million (flyaway cost, (FY2015))
|
| Developed from | TFV-400 |
The Cordoba RES-282 Shogun is a multi-role airborne early warning and control aircraft operated by the Carthage Air Forces. Based on the Cordoba TFV-400 airframe, the RES-282 provides all-weather aerial and ground surveillance, command, control, and communications to Carthaginian forces. The aircraft is distinguished by the large triangular radar array above the fuselage as well as the ESM receivers located at various points on airframe.
Development of the RES-282 began in 2006 as a replacement for the fleet of RES-280 Ninja AEW&C and RES-281 Daimyo airborne ground surveillance aircraft. The RES-282 was designed to integrate the functions of these aircraft into a single airframe while also adding expanded command and control facilities and improving endurance. The Cordoba TFV-400 airframe was selected over the TFV-340NG and Mehmud-Tabnit RTS-224 to provide the basic structure for the RES-282 following the TFV-400's selection for a separate Air Forces contract.
Development work on the RES-282 paralleled the final phases of the TFV-400's civilian testing and certification and low-rate production began in late 2014. As of 2016, 24 aircraft are currently in service with the Carthage Air Forces.
History
The adoption of the Distributed Engagement combat doctrine in the 1990s created an increased need for battlefield reconnaissance and surveillance assets to provide the target acquisition capabilities and coordination demanded by the expected operational tempo. This need was initially met by the rapid introduction of the AGS-59 Daimyo, a ground surveillance aircraft developed from the commercial R-500 airliner. Equipped with the SG3b Hawk ground-surveillance radar, the AGS-59 provided wide-area surveillance capability with the endurance to remain on station for hours at a time. Despite the added capability, shortcomings with the design were identified, stemming largely from the rushed design and procurement cycle: the aircraft was too small to carry out battle management functions, requiring a ground support team to process the collected data, and had limited room for future sensor expansion in the face of developing technologies. An initial order of 128 aircraft was later cut to 96 units based on the expectation that a more capable successor aircraft would be developed in the early 2000s.
Separately, the Air Forces had also established a program to evaluate proposals for a new AEW&C aircraft to replace the AEW-57 Ninja. Introduced in 1974, the AEW-57 replaced the turboprop AEW-55 Pathfinder with a design based on a modern commercial airliner using the much more capable SR5Ma Eagle surveillance radar. The expected service life of the AEW-57 at introduction was 40 years, which would require work on a replacement to begin in the early 2000s. Proposal evaluation began in the mid-1990s with a request for proposals expected to be issued in the early 2000s, but the program was delayed by cost overruns in the RFM-202 Shaheen program and the resulting political complications in the Air Forces budget.
Future Air Surveillance
In September 2006, under the direction of Secretary of the Air Forces Thad Kristianos, the Air Forces combined the Advanced Ground Surveillance and Next Generation Airborne Warning offices into a single program with the goal of developing a single surveillance aircraft to handle both ground and aerial surveillance, replacing both the AEW-57 and AGS-59. This new combined program was dubbed Future Air Surveillance, and also included requirements for a supporting constellation of unmanned aerial vehicles to extend the system's surveillance reach while reducing risk to the valuable manned surveillance aircraft. Despite protests from the Army, which preferred a dedicated ground surveillance aircraft more attentive to their needs and some areas of the Air Forces establishment who argued against increased unit costs, the merged program was touted as a means of reducing overhead and duplication of effort, a key political argument in the aftermath of the budget battles of the 2004 appropriations season.
The concept formulation phase evaluated several proposals to achieve the program's goals, investigating the current state of UAV technology and the availability of existing airframes for the Advanced Command Aircraft, the manned component of the program. Improvements in signal processing and the sharp reduction in processor size and energy demands over previous generations indicated that the expected electronics suite could be fitted to an aircraft approximately the same size as the AEW-57, although additional space would be required for the larger mission crew necessary to process the much greater quantity of information. While a quadjet design similar to the existing TFV-320 platform was initially preferred, the decline of the civil quadjet market in the face of newer, more efficient twinjets forced the committee to reevaluate its requirements and allow both quadjets and twinjets for consideration.
NSD$2.5 billion in funding for the Future Air Surveillance program was approved in 2009 and a set of requests for proposal issued by the Air Forces, including the component requests for the Advanced Command Aircraft. Under a new contracting model included in the 2008 Supplementary Defense Funding and Organization Act, the Air Forces issued separate requests for the basic airframe, air and ground surveillance equipment, and the integration contract rather than a single request for the fully integrated system. The new structure was designed to improve competitiveness by allowing companies without sufficient expertise to serve as prime contractors to bid on individual components while also allowing greater government oversight of the bidding process.
Component selection
Proposals for the air search suite were submitted by the RMA Corporation, Acheron Technologies, and North Iberian Electrical Systems. RMA proposed a modernized and enlarged version of the existing AW/ESR-1057 array, mounted in a rotating radome similar to that of the RES-280. The Acheron proposal used a technologically ambitious vertical fin mount providing 120° coverage on either side of the aircraft with a cavity endfire array mounted above in a "top hat" to provide coverage for the forward and rear 60° sectors. The NIES proposal was an arrangement of three arrays providing full coverage, mounted in a non-rotating triangular pod above the fuselage. The Acheron proposal was considered the most ambitious and innovative, while the RMA proposal considered a "safe" fallback solution, with the NIES proposal providing a mix of both. Following evaluation by the Air Forces and Government Statistics Office, NIES was selected as the air search contractor.
The ground surveillance radar was not opened to competitive bidding and the contract awarded to the RMA Corporation for the AW/ESR-1058 Bright Blue array, a modification of the AW/ESR-1057 Brilliant Park radar used by the RPA-285 Darter maritime patrol aircraft. The radar had been developed in conjunction with the Air Forces Research Laboratory and was the strongly preferred candidate out of those considered for the program, resulting in the no-bid contract. Protests against this selection were dismissed upon examination, which indicated that all legal and allowable contracting procedures had been followed.
Four bids for the airframe were received, from Mehmud-Tabnit, SHAFT ADS, and Cordoba Aerospace, which submitted two separate proposals. Due to the political factors involved in the program, no foreign companies submitted bids. The SHAFT bid was quickly rejected as the S560 airliner was considered too small to meet program requirements and no other aircraft of the type were operated by the Defense Forces. Mehmud-Tabnit's proposal for the RTS-224 Albatross was rejected in light of ongoing production difficulties and missed delivery deadlines, leaving only Cordoba's two bids. The updated TFV-340NG platform was considered the safer option, but the larger but still in-development TFV-400 promised superior performance and more space for electronics and personnel. Selection of the final airframe was deferred until 2012 until more data on the TFV-400 proposal could be provided.
Development
Full scale development for the electronic systems began in 2010, using three retired TFV-320s for aerodynamic load and volume tests. Two aircraft were modified to carry the triangular pods intended for use with the AW/ESR-1059 radar, with one aircraft later receiving the full suite to conduct operational flight tests in 2011. The third was modified as a testbed for the AW/ESR-1058's canoe radome and received the fully operational radar for testing. As the AW/ESR-1058 program required relatively few changes from the in-service AW/ESR-1057, the testing schedule was relatively short. While initial tests were conducted separately, later tests were conducted with both radars operating to test for potential interference issues.
By April 2012, the TFV-400 had begun flight tests and two additional pre-production aircraft was made available by Cordoba for tests by the Air Forces. The first aircraft was reserved for the Skyliner program to procure a new long-range VIP transport for government use, while the second was allocated by the ACA program. Flight tests demonstrated no major problems with integrating both sets of equipment on the aircraft, and the TFV-400 met the design requirements for speed, endurance, and reliability. Following the announcement of the TFV-400's selection in the Skyliner competition in September, the FAS program office announced the selection of the TFV-400 for the Advanced Command Aircraft in October 2012. Among the reasons cited in the decision was the airframe's space for future technology insertion programs and the aircraft's expected longevity, ensuring the availability of airframe parts and components for the entire span of the ACA's expected service life.
In May 2013 a second pre-production aircraft was delivered to the Air Forces to continue integration testing and support final testing of the combined electronics suite. An initial order for 64 RES-282s was approved in the FY2014 budget at a cost of $28.4 billion. Additional airframes on the assembly line had already been earmarked for conversion and commercial entry-to-service was expected in early 2014. The first production RES-282 was completed in February 2014 and reached initial operating capability in August, seven months after the TFV-400 entered commercial service. Six aircraft were available at IOC, while the original two testbeds were returned for brief refurbishment to remove test equipment and modify them to production standards.
Full operational capability was declared in December 2015, with eighteen aircraft in service. Reports from the Air Forces procurement office indicate that an additional order of 64 aircraft will be included in the FY2020 budget request, and that the projected final order total will be 224 aircraft.
Design
The RES-282 shares significant commonality with the civilian TFV-400, and has a cantilever low-mounted wing with two podded turbofan engines for propulsion. The airframe also has a significantly higher percentage of composites and aluminum-lithium alloys than legacy aircraft, reducing weight and improving endurance. While sharing the same fuselage length as the TFV-400α, the RES-282 incorporates components from the stretched -400β variant as well as new components designed to meet military-specific requirements, maintaining 85% parts commonality with commercial variants. The RES-282 does not incorporate the wing-folding mechanism of the TFV-400 and instead has fixed wings, with the empty space in the wingtips used to house ESM equipment.
The RES-282 is rated for an MTOW 8 tonnes higher than the -400α and uses engines in the same class as the -400β. To compensate for the higher landing weight, the RES-282 uses a strengthened undercarriage. An additional centerline fuel tank offered as an option for commercial aircraft is also standard on the RES-282 to meet endurance requirements. The glass cockpit of the civilian variant is retained on on the RES-282, along with full fly-by-wire controls. The use of a more modern cockpit design and more reliable equipment reduces the flight crew from three in the older RES-280 to just two, as in modern airliners. Most windows have been omitted to protect the crew and equipment from radiation emitted by the radar, and remaining windows have been coated with a thicker layer of indium tin oxide to further reduce radiation penetration into the airframe.
Using onboard fuel, the RES-282 has a total flight time of up to fifteen hours or approximately 11,000 kilometers (6,800 mi). This may be extended through the use of air-to-air refueling and sufficient space is available onboard for a relief crew as well as crew rest facilities. Like other large Carthaginian aircraft air-to-air refueling is accomplished via the forward-mounted flying boom receptacle. A refueling probe for use with probe-and-drogue systems was tested by Cordoba Aerospace on a converted TFV-400 but was not ordered by the Air Forces.
Engines
While the civilian TFV-400β is rated for three different engines depending on customer request, the RES-282 was designed for the Yatagarasu Turbo-engineering SX-500M, a three-spool turbofan providing up to 500 kN (112,000 lbf) of thrust, in the same class as the engines approved for the TFV-400β. The SX-500M was selected over existing options due to the greater maturity of the three-spool design over the geared two-spool design used in the Cordoba GTxa-400 series offered on the RTP-232 Skyliner and has been fitted with more powerful generators to provide sufficient electrical power to the aircraft's electronics and accessories. Like the civilian TFV-400, the RES-282 is an all-electric bleedless design and all cabin equipment is electrically powered.
The RES-282 inherits a number of noise-reducing technologies and design features from the TFV-400, including the use of saw-tooth rims, sound-absorbing materials in the engine casing, and a zero-splice intake liner. These features were retained in order to reduce the noise impact on local communities hosting flight operations as well as to improve crew comfort during missions.
Avionics
AW/ESR-1059 Orange Sapphire radar
The RES-282's primary sensor is the AW/ESR-1059 Orange Sapphire radar array developed by North Iberian Electrical Systems, composed of three 13-meter (43 ft) L-band AESA arrays providing full 360° coverage around the aircraft. The combined array is housed in a fixed triangular pod above the aircraft on a tripod mounting. Each array is composed of 1,350 transmit/receive (T/R) modules derived from modules used in the GW/ETS-983D radar used in the surface-based Tarnhelm air defense system. While the RES-280 Ninja uses a combination of cooling doors and engine bleed air for cooling, the RES-282 uses a liquid cooling system to control system temperatures due to the elimination of the bleed air system.
The AW/ESR-1059 is capable of tracking over 300 aerial targets at ranges in excess of 600 kilometers (370 mi) and can be operated in various different modes (including some combined modes) depending on terrain and intended target characteristics. The array can detect targets over land and sea from the surface up to the stratosphere, although low-altitude coverage is supplemented by the ventral AW/ESR-1058 Bright Blue radar. The array also provides integrated IFF capability. Compared to the previous AW/ESR-1057, the -1059 has significantly improved range and resolution thanks to a larger array and better signal processing. In particular, software and hardware improvements have been focused on addressing new threats, including stealth aircraft, smaller unmanned aerial vehicles, high-speed missiles, and complex targets such as helicopters.
AW/ESR-1058 Bright Blue radar
Ground surveillance and low-altitude supplemental coverage is provided by the AW/ESR-1058 Bright Blue radar, located in a canoe-shaped radome on the underside of the fuselage. Like the AW/ESR-1059 Orange Sapphire, the AW/ESR-1058 uses an AESA design but is mechanically scanned for wider coverage. The array is composed of some 1,750 T/R modules operating in the X-band and uses a separate liquid-cooling loop for temperature control.
The AW/ESR-1058 can detect ground targets at ranges of up to 300 kilometers (190 mi) and can be operated in several modes, including ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and air moving target indicator (AMTI), fixed target indicator (FTI), and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The AW/ESR-1058 and associated processing systems were designed to meet the requirements of the Airborne Missile Defense program, with significantly improved capabilities against low-flying cruise missiles including stealth designs and smaller UAVs.
AW/EAW-577 Absolute Nine passive detection suite
The AE/EAW-577 Absolute Nine suite provides signals intelligence and electronic intelligence-gathering capabilities, allowing the RES-282 to detect, identify, and geolocate signals throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Data gathered by the array of receivers on the forward fuselage, wing tips, and tail can be used to supply updated information to the electronic defense systems of friendly combat aircraft in order to optimize protection against detected threats. This information can either be processed onboard by the crew of electronic warfare officers or transmitted to other stations for further analysis to support the development of additional countermeasures. The system also serves as a passive warning system, alerting the aircraft in the event of detection and engagement by hostile aircraft or ground-based air defenses.
Self-defense
Protection against enemy attack is provided via the AW/EAI-545 Pastel Pink missing warning system and the AW/EWI-328 Starlight electronic countermeasures system. The AW/EAI-545 is composed of a number of infrared and ultraviolet sensors designed to alert the aircraft of any inbound missiles. Supplementary tracking data is provided by the AW/ESR-1059 radar and AW/EAW-577 passive detection system. The AW/EWI-328 Starlight system is designed to provide defense against a range of both airborne and ground-based threats, including multiple modes of jamming and towed decoys. The AW/EWI-328 is based on the AW/EWI-324 Obake self-defense system employed in the RFM-202 Shaheen, adapted for the greater processing power and size of a commercial airliner. Chaff and flare dispensers may also be mounted.
Like other command and control aircraft, the RES-282 has no weapons carriage capability although several proposals have been made to add multipurpose hardpoints to the wings outboard of the engines, similar to the hardpoints used for aerial refueling kits.
Operational history
The first RES-282s were delivered to the 154th Air Control Squadron in August 2015. With the delivery of these aircraft, the type was declared to have reached initial operating capacity and production scheduled to move from low-rate initial production to full production within one year. The 154th and later the 207th Air Control Squadrons continued training operations in the interim. Additional deliveries continued throughout 2015 and into 2016, with full operational capability declared in December 2015.
The first international deployment for the RES-282 began in February 2016, with four RES-282s deployed to North Kilovosk in support of the Aels Expeditionary Support Force. The RES-282 served alongside the RES-280 and RES-281 supporting the occupation of ceded areas of South Kilovosk as well as south Voskian compliance with the terms of the Treaty of Fislev.
Operators
- Carthage Air Forces - 24 active aircraft, 44 on order, 224 total projected order
Specifications
General Characteristics
- Crew: 2 (Pilot, copilot)
- Mission Crew: 30-40
- Length: 64.9 m (213 ft)
- Wingspan: 72 m (236 ft)
- Height: 19.6 m (64 ft)
- Empty Weight: 235,000 kg (518,000 lb)
- Loaded Weight: 400,000 kg (880,000 lb)
- Max Takeoff Weight: 401,000 kg (884,000 lb)
- Powerplant: 2 x Yatagarasu Turbo-engineering SX-500M high-bypass turbofans, 500 kN (112,000 lbf) each
- Fuel Capacity: 210,000 liters (55,000 U.S. gal)
Performance
- Maximum Speed: Mach 0.9 (950 km/h) at 10,700 meters
- Cruise Speed: Mach 0.85 (910 km/h) at 10,700 meters
- Range: 11,000 km (6,800 mi)
- Service Ceiling: 13,200 m (43,300 ft)
Avionics
- AW/ESR-1059 Orange Sapphire air search radar
- AW/ESR-1058 Bright Blue ground surveillance radar
- AW/EAW-577 Absolute Nine Passive Detection Suite
- AW/EAI-545 Pastel Pink Missile Warning System
- 6 x Infrared sensor
- 6 x Ultraviolet sensor
- AW/EWI-328 Starlight Electronic Defense Suite
- AW/ENI-1702 Advanced Datalink System
- AW/EDS-562 Multipurpose Countermeasure Dispenser