Navy asks RTX Raytheon for 13 airborne electronic warfare (EW) jammers for U.S. and Australian combat jets
PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – RTX Corp. will build 13 Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) airborne electronic warfare (EW) systems for U.S. Navy and Australian EA-18 Growler combat jets under terms of a $591 million contract announced in late November.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking the RTX Raytheon segment in El Segundo, Calif., to build 13 NGJ-MB ship sets -- nine for the Navy and four for the Royal Australian Air Force. Each aircraft has two ship sets.
Counter-radar
The NGJ midband is an advanced electronic attack system that denies, disrupts, and degrades enemy communications and air-defense radar systems. It offers a combination of agile active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) and an all-digital back end. The contract includes spare parts, support equipment, and non-recurring engineering.
The NGJ-MB helps the Growler aircraft operate at long ranges, attack several different targets simultaneously, use advanced electronic jamming techniques, and incorporate rapid upgrades through a modular, open-systems architecture.
In September RTX Raytheon won a $192 million contract to upgrade the NGJ-MB system to counter new adversary RF and microwave threats. This upgrade will provide the NGJ-MB with additional frequency coverage.
Raytheon delivered the first NGJ-MB pod to the Navy for testing in July 2019. The technology also can be scaled to other missions and aircraft.
The NGJ airborne jammer pod is replacing the 40-plus-year ALQ-99 jammer system on the EA-18G -- a version of the Navy's carrier-based two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornet jet fighter-bomber that is modified specially for electronic warfare.
Airborne attack
The EA-18G leads an airborne attack by disrupting enemy radar, communications, and computer networks with jamming signals and computer viruses. The aircraft also can destroy enemy radar installations with its AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM).
Raytheon's NGJ will integrate the most advanced electronic attack technology into the EA-18G, such as high-powered, agile beam-jamming techniques, and solid-state electronics to deny, degrade and disrupt enemy threats while protecting U.S. and coalition forces.
Raytheon’s NGJ will provide airborne electronic attack and jamming capabilities, and will include cyber-attack capabilities that use the aircraft's active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar to insert tailored data streams into enemy radar and communications systems.
The NGJ also will have an open-systems architecture for future upgrades. Raytheon will use its gallium nitride (GaN)-based AESA technologies for the NGJ design.
Open-systems architecture
Eventually Raytheon engineers may modify the NGJ to install it aboard the F-35 joint strike fighter, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as to other manned aircraft in addition to the EA-18G.
The Navy also is developing the Next Generation Jammer Low Band (NGJ-LB) in an urgent effort to develop low-band tactical radar jammers using existing technologies for low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) applications on the EA-18G Growler EW jet.
L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Fla., won a contract in late 2020 to design and build the NGJ-LB, which experts say will be useful in jamming low-band radar systems designed to detect stealth aircraft like the F-35 joint strike fighter. The NGJ-LB transmitter will fit in a pod on Station 6 of the EA-18G.
The system will enhance the performance of frequency coverage, effective isotropic radiated power, spatial coverage, spectral purity, and polarization; obtain existing contractor data related to transmitter group performance; and assess the potential to deploy an open-systems interim pod solution rapidly.
On this contract Raytheon will do the work in Forest, Miss.; McKinney, Texas; El Segundo, Calif.; Andover, Mass.; and Fort Wayne, Ind., and should be finished by January 2028. For more information contact RTX Raytheon online at www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/sea/ngj, or Naval Air Systems Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
John Keller | Editor-in-Chief
John Keller is the Editor-in-Chief, Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine--provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronics and optoelectronic technologies in military, space and commercial aviation applications. John has been a member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since 1989 and chief editor since 1995.
