Wedgetail AEW&C

The Wedgetail Airborne Early Warning and Control system is an airborne RADAR platform originally developed for the Australian RAAF.  Sales of the aircraft system have also been made to the governments of Turkey and South Korea – resulting in over $4 billion dollars in sales to the Boeing Company.  The system combines a Boeing 737-700 airframe with a massive phased array RADAR system developed by Northrop Grumman Corporation.

System Organizational Layout Click to Learn More About the System

I was the Software IPT Lead on the program responsible for the development and completion of over 840,000 lines of code that make the RADAR work.  When I took over that role, the software was three years late, and the wheels were off the cart.  I was able to lead the team of over 45 software developers to the successful completion of that effort and pull the already late schedule in a full year – finishing the effort in two years.

The massively parallel system featured over 110 microprocessors performing RADAR real-time control, real-time Digital Signal Processing of returns, integrated RADAR/IFF on the same aperture, and several other key features I can’t really discuss.

Because of the nature of the development process, it was subjected to NATO, Australian, and US Secret information processing, and tight export controls, which added layers of complexity to the development effort.

The software was primarily C++ with some Java, and various scripting languages, running several real-time operating systems, and developed using a CMMI-5 process.