| Cubic's
Surveillance and Control Data Link (SCDL) - considered the
best anti-jam data link in the world - is a key element of
the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS)
program.
A cooperative
U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army program, Joint STARS is a sophisticated
battle management system that allows air and ground commanders
to look behind enemy lines, obtain intelligence and targeting
data. The radar system can detect, classify and track the
movements of hostile - or potentially hostile -- ground forces,
including tracked and wheeled vehicles as well as low-flying
aircraft or ships at sea. )
The Cubic
SCDL provides a secure, all-weather link between Northrop Grumman's
E8C aircraft to multiple ground stations built by Motorola. It
consists of two major elements: Air
Data Terminals and Ground
Data Terminals. Among its features, the SCDL can relay information
from one ground station to another in the network, and has multiple
networks that operate simultaneously within the same geographical
area. (See Operational Concept for additional information)
Starting
from a prototype in 1989, the link's performance and reliability
have been demonstrated through 58 failure-free missions during
Operation Desert Storm and more than 100 successful missions
in Bosnia.
Key features
of the SCDL include:
- High-speed
frequency hopping for maximum resistance to in-band interference
from any source
- Full
RF spectrum agility, enabling SCDL to operate in shared
spectral bands
- Encryption,
error correction and data redundancy to ensure that data
always get through
- Adaptive
data rates to 1.9 million bits/second
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