Photo By Staff Sgt. Magen M. Reeves | A portion of the installation is photographed from atop an antenna tower with...... read more read more
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The 325th Fighter Wing, located at Tyndall Air Force Base, hosts 19 tenant units. This collaboration allows for access to more resources and support for units based on their specific role and mission.
The 83rd Fighter Weapons Squadron is one of these tenant units and maintains and operates three antenna towers used for missile telemetry tracking, supplying crucial data from fourth- and fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
These highly sophisticated antenna dishes track and receive missile telemetry in real-time while pilots fly test and evaluation missions over the Gulf of Mexico. The data collected serves a critical role for Air Combat Command.
“The towers are available anytime ACC or a Weapon System Evaluation Program needs them,” said Grant Burris, 83rd FWS technical advisor. “They are used not only for WSEP, but for all Eglin developmental test missions requiring drone scoring [data], which means how close the missile approached versus if the target was hit.”
The information collected from these missions is crucial for command and control and the loss of Tyndall’s antennas would disable some live-fire training scenarios from being executed. The data collected helps evaluate and determine mission success while also narrowing down best practices for future endeavors and deployments.
“During missions we collect the telemetry and deliver it to the analysts,” said Doug Novak, 83rd FWS telemetry maintenance supervisor. “We also, at the same time, record the data for analysts to look at in the future if there [are] problems that they find later.”
This in-depth information helps senior leaders and weapon systems analysts create standards for evaluations and initiate and integrate real-world training scenarios for pilot training purposes.
“The 83rd FWS’ mission ensures our warfighters have what they need to fight by evaluating the air-to-air capabilities while also supporting a wide range of programs from operational and developmental testing, to supporting our sister services and foreign partners’ readiness,” said Novak.
Outside of flying missions, regular maintenance on the antennas is required.
“My job is to keep the Air Force’s assets in as good of condition as possible given that we are about a mile from the Gulf of Mexico,” said Novak. “Keeping telemetry antennas and associated gear safe from the environment has been a major challenge.”
According to Novak, having the telemetry systems not co-located with the antenna’s source potentially causes valuable radio frequency signals and information to be lost in transit from one geographical location to another.
“To remove the majority of the losses associated with transport of the radio frequency, I’ve co-located that equipment with the source,” said Novak.
Novak and his team are the subject matter experts when it comes to maintaining and, in some cases, improving the antennas and telemetry systems. Carefully calculated research has led to installing refrigerated enclosures and adding highly environmental resistant cabling, just to name a few.
“Since I can keep the very sensitive and very expensive gear safe in that environment, [we can] significantly reduce the loss of valuable radio frequency signal level and extend our reach out into the Gulf of Mexico for our missions,” said Novak.
Although assigned to the 53rd Wing out of Eglin AFB, Florida, the 325th FW houses and supports the 53rd Weapons Evaluation Group at Tyndall, owner of the 83rd FWS. This collaboration between Tyndall and Eglin helps propel both wings’ missions as their units utilize military airspace over the Gulf.
“The towers at Tyndall provide better proximity to the action,” said Burris. “If you want missile telemetry captured and real world, in-flight mission flexibility you need to come to Tyndall.”
| Date Taken: | 01.20.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 01.20.2022 09:25 |
| Story ID: | 413124 |
| Location: | TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 107 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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