U.S. Air Force wants a new brain for its older F-16s

Every one-on-one meeting slot at the U.S. Air Force’s upcoming industry day for a new F-16 mission computer is already booked, and the service has now restricted access to the event’s sensitive briefings to companies certified to handle export-controlled military data.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s F-16 program office will host the event on Oct. 20 and 21 at the Hope Hotel and Conference Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. In an Oct. 8 update, the program office said that access to Controlled Unclassified Information, and to any industry day sessions where it may be discussed, is limited to companies with an active Joint Certification Program registration, the DD Form 2345 process that clears U.S. contractors to receive export-controlled technical data. The event itself is unclassified.

Attendance is capped at 80 people, with no more than two per company, and registration closes Oct. 14. The program office said all 24 of the 25-minute one-on-one sessions with the program manager, contracting officers and technical leads were reserved by Sept. 24.

The program, called the Next-Generation Mission Compute, would replace the Modular Mission Computer on U.S. Air Force F-16 Block 40, 42, 50 and 52 jets, the variants that make up the core of the service’s Viper fleet. The mission computer runs the jet’s combat systems, including radar, targeting, weapons and displays, and a more powerful one would let the U.S. Air Force add new capabilities without major changes to the airframe. The new computer is also meant for foreign customers that fly the same F-16 versions.

The program office first asked industry for ideas in a sources-sought notice published May 29. That notice said a primary goal is to physically separate the computer’s safety-critical, real-time functions from its mission software, and it called for the software to follow the Agile Mission Suite government reference architecture, an open framework meant to let new applications be added more easily. The current Modular Mission Computer traces back to the Common Configuration Implementation Program, which brought roughly 650 Block 40, 42, 50 and 52 jets to a common avionics standard between 2000 and 2010.

The U.S. Air Force plans to keep these F-16s flying into the 2040s and in 2022 launched a separate modernization effort, the Post-Block Integration Team program, covering 608 jets at a value approaching $6.3 billion.

On the first day of the industry day, the program office plans to brief its acquisition strategy and schedule, with hardware and software overviews and open questions, before moving to the individual company sessions. A second day is set aside for additional one-on-one meetings if needed.