The State Department approved the FMS to Italy of an unspecified number of EA-37B aircraft, two years after the MoD first mentioned the intention of acquiring the Electronic Attack system.
The U.S. State Department has approved on Oct. 7, 2024, the Foreign Military Sale to Italy of the EA-37B and its Electronic Attack Mission System. The announcement comes two years after the Italian Ministry of Defense first mentioned the intention of acquiring the Electronic Attack system to equip two Gulfstream G-550 aircraft.
According to the DSCA notice, Italy has requested to buy the Electronic Attack (EA)-37B mission system, consisting of the following non-Major Defense Equipment: Network Centric Collaborative Targeting (NCCT) systems; System Control and Monitoring subsystems; Radio Frequency Receiver (RFR) subsystems; Software-defined Radio (SDR) subsystems; Counter Radar Assembly; Array Panels; AN/ARC-210 RT-2036 radios; KG-250 In-line Network Encryptors; KY-100 Narrow/wideband Terminals; KIV-77 Mode 4/5 Identification Friend or Foe (IFF); AN/PYQ-10C Simple Key Loaders.
In addition to these components, the program includes support, training, spares, maintenance and documentation. The quantities of each component were not disclosed, however Italy previously mentioned the will to acquire two aircraft. The estimated total cost is $680 million (€ 620 million).
“The proposed sale will improve Italy’s capability to meet current and future threats by increasing interoperability with the United States Air Force (USAF) and disrupting enemy command and control communications when Italy is contributing to overseas contingency operations,” mentioned the FMS notice. Italy will become, this way, the first foreign government to acquire the highly classified Compass Call system and the Italian Air Force will become one of the few operators to field a combat proven, state-of-the-art and highly effective Electronic Attack capability.
The Italian P-MMMS program and the Electronic Attack capability
As part of the multiyear defense planning document (Documento Programmatico Pluriennale della Difesa) for 2022-2024, the Italian Government mentioned the completion of the acquisition of the Gulfstream G550-based CAEW/BM&C capability, as well as a new Electronic Warfare capability. The program, known as P-MMMS (Piattaforma Multi-Missione, Multi- Sensore/Multi-Mission, Multi-Sensor Platform), is aimed at obtaining a modern asset that can be integrated in a net-centric C4ISTAR architecture and later adapted for multi-domain operations.
As we reported in 2021, a number of “clean” G550 are being acquired to be converted at a later stage. These aircraft, that the document calls “green base JAMMS”, are scheduled to be converted in the Full Mission Capable CAEW and Electronic Combat variants. The DPP 2022-2024 first hinted at the Electronic Combat variant of the aircraft being the then EC-37B Compass Call in an entry saying: “Completion of the acquisition program for new aircraft equipped for and dedicated to Electronic Warfare operations (EC-37B)”.
As part of P-MMMS program, the Italian Air Force already acquired two G550 CAEW (Conformal Airborne Early Warning) aircraft. In 2020 the requirement for a new SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) aircraft emerged among those included in the Defense Policy Document for 2020-2022 (Documento Programmatico della Difesa 2020-2022), in the form of two JAMMS (Joint Airborne Multi-sensor Multi-mission System) aircraft.
The Italian JAMMS program is structured in more tranches: the first one, worth 1.2B Euro, covers the acquisition of the first two Full Mission Capable (FMC) aircraft and six “green” airframes that can be converted at a later stage to either JAMMS or CAEW configurations, together with logistic and infrastructural support. The Italian Air Force plans to operate a fleet of ten special mission modified G550s. The second one, worth 925M Euro, covers the modification of 4 out of 6 green airframes.
In 2023, Italy’s Secretariat General of Defence / National Armaments Directorate (which is responsible for the procurement of materiel, equipment and weapon systems for the Italian Armed Forces) approved the Italian Air Force request to convert two of the green G550s, with options for a third, to the FMC Electronic Attack (EA) configuration as part of the second tranche of the program.
The Directorate determined that the only solution capable of satisfying the requirements is the EC-37 being developed by the U.S. Air Force for the Compass Call Rehost program. After the modification to the EC-37B “variant”, the G550 will externally be similar to the CAEW jets already in service in Italy.
The EA-37B Compass Call
The Compass Call system is an airborne tactical electronic attack weapon system installed on a heavily modified version of the C-130 Hercules, called EC-130H Compass Call. This system disrupts enemy command and control communications, radars, and navigation systems and limits adversary coordination, which is essential for enemy force management.
Following the type’s retirement announced in 2014, the U.S. Air Force initiated the Compass Call Rehost program, which is moving the current Compass Call systems from the EC-130H to the new EA-37B, based on the Gulfstream G550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning Aircraft (CAEW) airframe. The G550 has increased speed, endurance, and extended stand-off range over the legacy EC-130H aircraft, says L3Harris, providing significantly improved survivability, as well as providing improved stand-off jamming capability and flexibility to counter sophisticated communications and radar threats.
As the U.S. Department of Defense’s only long-range, full-spectrum stand-off electromagnetic warfare jamming platform, the Compass Call plays a key role in the US Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) strategy, alongside the EA-18G Growler and the F-16CM Block 50/52 Fighting Falcon. Future upgrades will boost counter-C5ISRT capabilities, incorporating software-defined radios and an open architecture to quickly adapt to emerging threats.
The first five EA-37B aircraft will host the current Baseline 3 variant of Compass Call, which will be “transplanted” from the retired EC-130Hs. The remaining aircraft are scheduled to receive the upgraded Baseline 4 variant currently in development, which will reportedly introduce a new low-band jammer system. It is not known which variant will be requested by the Italian Air Force and also which variant the US open will be open to provide.
The core of the new Baseline 4 system is BAE Systems’ Small Adaptive Bank of Electronic Resources (SABER) technology, built around a suite of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) utilizing an open system architecture. SABER represents a significant technological leap, enabling the transition of the Compass Call weapon system from a hardware-based platform to a software-driven electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) warfare capability.
Considering that the EC-37B airframe has a much smaller size than the EC-130H, reducing the size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements of the prime mission equipment was a key point of the program. This was achieved thanks to the new open-system hardware and software solution that is being adopted for the EC-37B which, by the way, also resulted in a much lower cooling requirement for all onboard electronics.
As a result of all the program’s efforts, the EC-37B’s operating costs will be cut in half compared to the EC-130H Compass Call, while also being able to perform its mission at higher altitudes and speed and longer ranges and durations. The G550-based aircraft will also be optimized to perform missions in Anti-Access, Area-Denial (A2/AD) environments, while also being able to be easily upgraded to face new threats thanks to its Modular Open Systems Architecture.
Even more advanced capabilities could find their way into the Compass Call’s electronics and software, as Chris O’Donnell, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Platform and Weapon Portfolio Management, said in 2022 that the Department of Defense needs targeted investments and innovative and novel capabilities, such as cognitive EW, to keep the edge over adversaries and to counter advanced and non-traditional threats. As a matter of fact, cognitive EW capabilities are already being tested with the Angry Kitten ECM pod, so it is totally expectable that someday they will end up on the EC-37B.
You can find out more about the EC-37B Compass Call in the detailed report we published here at The Aviationist last year.
