The Navy intends to award a contract to begin development of the NGJ mid-band pod by June 2013, with IOC scheduled for 2020.

DTS , IRST and the Type 4 AMC are part of the Navy’s F/A-18 Flight Plan, which lays out the road map for future capability upgrades to the Super Hornet and Growler .

In April, in the first major activity under a Flight Plan cooperative research and development agreement, Boeing and the Navy flight tested a prototype distributed targeting system – networked, which has increased processing power and the ability to connect to advanced networks.