Collins Aerospace, an RTX subsidiary, has finished flight testing the MS-110 Multispectral Airborne Reconnaissance System on the F-16 aircraft.
This milestone comes one year after the system’s first flight on an F-16 in June 2022 for an unnamed international customer, the company announced from its Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters on Friday.
“With MS-110 development and integration completed, the critical intelligence made available by the system can be rapidly rolled out to support multi-domain efforts,” said Andy Hunter, director and general manager of intelligent sensing for Collins Aerospace.
He said that this expansion of an earlier indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a U.S. Air Force foreign military sales client “will be a major factor” in ramping up production and increasing system affordability.
Included in the MS-110 are multispectral features designed to boost intelligence analysts’ ability to collect information from a broad range of target sets. The system utilizes Collins Aerospace’s multi-spectral imaging knowledge from SYERS-2C, which was flown on the U-2.
MS-110 is built on the foundation of the DB-110 and uses the same support and imagery exploitation infrastructure — a characteristic that allows DB-110 operators to adapt their pods to the MS-110 configuration at their own maintenance facilities to lower costs and reduce operational downtime for the system. MS-110 is also compatible with MALE unmanned aerial vehicles, including the MQ-9.
During the flight testing period, Collins Aerospace conducted an exhaustive set of assessments and related ground activities to ensure that the system’s wide area, long-range sensor suite was prepared for deployment. Currently, the organization is working to deliver 16 total sensors to global Fast-Jet operators as well as 13 pods for three other customers.
Collins Aerospace’s airborne and reconnaissance systems have been employed on both tactical fast jet platforms and special mission intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance business jets.