F-35's DAS Demonstrates Ballistic Missile Defense Capabilities: "Northrop Grumman's AN/AAQ-37 Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (DAS) for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter successfully detected and tracked a two-stage rocket launch at a distance exceeding 800 miles during a routine flight test conducted aboard the company's BAC 1-11 test bed aircraft.
'The DAS could fill critical capability gaps in the area of ballistic missile defense (BMD),' said Dave Bouchard, program director for F-35 sensors at Northrop Grumman.
'We have only scratched the surface on the number of functions the F-35's DAS is capable of providing. With DAS, we've combined instantaneous 360-degree spherical coverage, high frame refresh rates, high resolution, high sensitivity powerful processors and advanced algorithms into a single system. The number of possibilities is endless.'"
