A Vertical Upgrade For Airborne Early Warning

I have been to Europe 20+ times, but mostly France and Germany. The first time I went to London, only a few years ago, I bought a book in the airport called the Ntc's Super-Mini British Slang Dictionary. I have since lost the book, but because my wife and I did a lot of partying on that trip I remember thinking on the way home the book had been a good investment. I found it was useful, for example , when I actually had to stop a conversation that was getting a bit confrontational, pull out the book, and look up an insult I had just received after a few too many brews on the second night. Apparently I was being a jerkoff, and when my wife spit out her beer laughing at me reading the slang dictionary, it thankfully broke the tension of the moment and the party continued. Basically the guy had called me a tosser.

We have heard for years that this was coming.

TOSS is a Bell/Boeing V-22 equipped with a palletized version of the Royal Navy/Thales Cerberus airborne radar system. In RN service, the Cerberus - which comprises the Searchwater radar and operator stations - is fitted to the Sea King ASaC7 helicopter. Although it resembles the original Sea King AEW system, developed in a panic reaction after the loss of two ships to Exocet missiles in the 1982 Falklands war, the Cerberus system is new, the last of 13 aircraft having been delivered early this year, and has AEW and overland modes and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and inverse SAR capability.

TOSS stands for Tactical Organic Sensing System (TOSS) and the project apparently has some quiet momentum. According to Ares, Boeing wants to do a three year joint capability technology demonstration (JCTD) with the Royal Navy to test out the technology.

Nevermind that this would be a huge capability increase over the Sea Kings AEWs, the value on the export market after the Royal Navy would be enormous. Nothing deployed from sea is in the class of the Hawkeye, nothing, but the Hawkeye can only take off and land on US and French carriers. This version of the MV-22 however could take off and land on aviation ships from Australia to South Korea to Japan to India to Italy to Spain to Brazil and potentially even Turkey and South Africa in the future. This would be a game changing capability for Navy's that leveraged the Joint Strike Fighter from naval aviation ships.

As we expected Richard Beedall has a fantastic summery covering all angles of the Maritime Airborne Surveillance and Control (MASC) of which TOSS is apart of, updated today. He covers all angles with his usual brilliance.

We do not claim to be experts in naval aviation, and in particular we admire the MV-22... from a safe distance. My Sgt says he would go to war in one any day, which doesn't say much because he will do just about anything. I am curious what the capabilities and limitations might be, but we'll let the experts handle those questions. This blog usually refers to the opinions of our MV-22 expert for aspects related to that platform, and we'll be looking for his insights into what this might mean for the larger MV-22 program that is on the verge of picking up steam while having serious issues at the same time.

HT Eric