US Air Force F-16 Fighters to Receive Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS)

The U.S. Air Force took another step in the effort to modernize the electronic warfare (EW) capabilities of the F-16 fleet. On March 10, in advance of a multi-million dollar contract modification award expected later this year, the Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate issued an Unpriced Change Order (UCO) modification to Northrop Grumman for the F-16 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS). The UCO follows a $40 million Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) modification award the company received in June 2021 to develop an IVEWS environmentally and safety of flight certified prototype.

Over the next 18 months, Northrop Grumman will complete IVEWS – also referred to as AN/ALQ-257 – development and install the system on several F-16s for flight testing. Additional development, integration, hardware qualification testing, and Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) asset procurement will support the IVEWS Developmental Test/Operational Test (DT/OT) and Operational Assessment (OA) in early 2023.
IVEWS provides the next generation EW system that is internal to the F-16 and interoperable with the onboard APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar. It is designed to Open Missions Systems requirements and provisioned for long-term growth capability to support future upgrades such as the Fiber Optic Tow Decoy, Adaptive/Cognitive Processing, and Open System Architecture compliance.