I hadn’t realised it was so portable - but how resistant is it to enemy satellite detection? (I’m presuming it’s pretty stealthy otherwise it wouldn5 be much use on a carrier when it goes EMCON silent, but ships move when you go silent - and islands don’t. So a quick fix could allow rapid targeting).
https://www.defensenews.com/digital-...irfields-soon/
Raytheon’s precision landing system could be coming to more allied ships, expeditionary airfields soon
WASHINGTON — Raytheon Technologies is pushing its aircraft precision landing system out to more customers globally, making it easier for allied navies to cross-deck on each other’s ships and for Marine jets to island-hop as high-end warfare concepts push the fleet in those directions……
The U.S. and U.K. navies last year announced an interchangeability plan for future operations, with the current Queen Elizabeth deployment being the first demonstration of the idea that they could not only deploy alongside each other, but go further to mix and match operators, parts, logistics, command-and-control structures and more, to get the most capacity out of working together.…..
Raytheon and the Marine Corps are also in talks over using JPALS ashore to help pilots find expeditionary runways — which would be particularly relevant under the Marines’ expeditionary advanced base operations concept that involves dispersing small groups of Marines across islands and shorelines where there may not be much established infrastructure.
The service has already practiced establishing expeditionary airfields to refuel and rearm aircraft, and having a JPALS system on the ground would make it all the easier and safer for these planes to come in for a landing in a new and temporary location.
“When you think about island-hopping, the system is so small — right now it’s just in transit cases, like pelican cases — you can throw it in the back of a helicopter, land, set it up and you’re good to go,” Jaynes said.
“If you need to move to another island, you can pick it back up and go, and it takes about an hour [for] synchronization with the satellites: so you roll out the transit cases, set up your GPS triangle in about 15 minutes, and then you’re synchronizing with satellites and you’re good to go for precision approach.”
Cleveland said the system could be moved via Humvee or potentially airdropped and that one expeditionary JPALS system can establish up to 50 different landing points within a 20 nautical mile radius.
After two previous tests in 2019, the Marine Corps invited Raytheon to come to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma this June for more testing. Marines in F-35Bs did 50 or 60 landings, both traditional and vertical, using the JPALS guidance system. They started using just the primary runway, but in later tests they established a secondary runway 11 miles away and practiced approaches where JPALS diverted them to a different runway at the last minute.
In the real world, this could happen if bad weather made the original landing point too dangerous to approach, or if enemy forces had picked up on the original landing point on a small island, Jaynes and Cleveland explained.
The Navy will soon integrate JPALS onto its V-22 Osprey variant, the CMV-22 that will serve the carrier onboard delivery mission on aircraft carriers.
This integration work could bring the Marines’ MV-22 into the fold, Jaynes said, meaning the Marines could use both their F-35Bs and MV-22s in precision landings on allied ships and expeditionary island airfields.