The F-35’s distributed aperture system, or DAS, recently detected and tracked a two-stage rocket launch from more than 800 miles away. This was accomplished during a routine flight test aboard a surrogate aircraft, DAS maker Northrop Grumman announced Tuesday. DAS is an infrared sensor system designed to provide 360-degree situational awareness to F-35 pilots. Operating off the company’s BAC 1-11 test bed aircraft, the system tracked the rocket during its nine-minute, two-stage flight from horizon break until final burnout. “We have only scratched the surface on the number of functions the F-35’s DAS is capable of providing,” said Dave Bouchard, Northrop’s program director for F-35 sensors. He added, “The number of possibilities is endless.”
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…