External Hard Points and Pod Carriage
All Phoenix Air “special missions” Learjets and Gulfstream G-I aircraft have hard points installed to allow for the carriage of pods, aerial towed targets and/or carriage of the Northrup BQM-74 Chukar Aerial Target Drones.
The Learjets have hard points installed under each aircraft wing capable of attaching 14-inch Ejector Rack Units (ERU), and the Gulfstream G-I’s have a set of hard points installed on the aircraft belly capable of attaching either 14-inch or 30-inch Ejector Rack Units. Multiple cables (coax, power, data) are installed between the aircraft’s pressurized fuselage where controllers sit through the pressure wall and out to the hard points, enabling external pods or other array to be “plugged in” while attached to wing or belly stations. This allows pod control and mission power to be generated inside the aircraft’s pressurized environment.
With the installation of a Triple External Rack (TER) onto an Ejector Rack Unit (ERU), multiple external pods can be carried on a single hard point location.
Phoenix Air aircraft can carry any of the following external pods:
- ALQ-167 (ULQ-21 based)
- ASR-101, ALQ-188
- ALE-2, ALE-38
- AST-4, AST-6
- ALE-43
- ALQ-170 (Gulfstream G-I aircraft only)
