Northrop Grumman completed its first test flight of an enhanced targeting capability for the U.S. Air Force’s E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) from its facility in Melbourne, Fla. Northrop Grumman said the flight demonstrated the next generation tracking capability of its Data Fusion System (DFS) and related system improvements to the Joint STARS radar and navigation subsystems. During the first flight, crews demonstrated precision and long-term tracking of maritime targets, maintaining an automated track of a maritime target for over two hours during one segment of the flight. "The DFS lets the system track multiple targets within the radar’s field of view," said Dave Nagy, Northrop Grumman vice president for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems. "It automatically tasks the radar or other sensors to collect data required to maintain track quality of all selected tracks. The system provides automated target re-acquisition." The flight also demonstrated integrating a current generation commercial-off-the-shelf IBM BladeCenter server into the Joint STARS data management baseline.