The Joint STARS OK-627/ARY-3 UHF radio control group- evolution of a state of the art airborne cosite communications system

The E-8C Joint STARS system was developed by and is produced by the Northrop Grumman Corporation Surveillance and Battle Management Systems (SBMS) located in Melbourne, Florida. It was developed for the US Air Force and operationally supports the Air Force and the Army by detecting moving and stationary ground targets with its on-board radar and data, linking the information to ground support modules (GSM). Joint STARS also communicates by voice and data links with other Army and Air Force units. Designing for communications performance on joint STARS, especially UHF, is complicated by the severe cosite environment due to the extensive radio configuration required to support the large crew. The communications system includes a suite of 12 UHF HAVE QUICK II capable radios divided into two components, the aircraft component and the prime mission equipment (PME) component. The PME component was developed by Magnavox Electronic Systems Company, Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The PME, the OK-627/ARY-3 UHF radio control group includes 12 ARC-225 UHF radio sets, 12 F-1654/A radio frequency interference filters developed by the ECI Division of E-Systems, St. Petersburg, Florida, a C-12370/A control-interface which acts as the radio group controller (RGC) and an O-1814/A reference frequency oscillator (RFO). The aircraft component includes 12 UHF antennas and their associated interconnecting cables, prime power, cooling, acoustic noise control and mounting provisions. The system interfaces to the 22 person crew at operator workstations (OWS) through TSEC/KY-58 secure speech equipment, the OW-115/ARY-3 intercommunications group and redundant MILVAX computers in the operations and control (O&C) subsystem.