A team from the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Mass., recently completed site acceptance testing and flight certification of a new military navigation system for the Bulgarian air force, Hanscom officials announced Monday. The group completed work on the AN/TRN-26 tactical air navigation system at Dolna Mitropolia Air Base in June. Bulgaria acquired it under a foreign military sale. Manufactured by Moog, the system will provide Bulgarian pilots with distance and course information in all weather conditions during instrument landings and visual flight rule conditions. “It’s a huge step up from what they’d been working with before”—namely now-obsolete and unreliable Soviet-era technology from the 1950s and 1960s, said Peter Radzikowski, chief engineer of the Hanscom team. The new system will also enhance coalition operations with the NATO ally. (Hanscom release by Chuck Paone)
Air Force Global Strike Command has fielded a new prototype system for beyond-line-of-sight communications on the B-52H Stratofortress in a step forward for modernizing the Cold War-era heavy bomber.