JAMMING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Oct 2018 Jamie Hunter
"The EA-18G Growler is a vital asset for the US Navy in the airborne electronic attack role, and its capabilities are set to increase via the Next-Generation Jammer initiative....
...[The Growler] still carries the 1970s-vintage AN/ALQ-99 tactical jamming pods. The advent of the Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) was always planned as part of the incremental modernization of naval electronic attack. Raytheon is about to start integration work that will unite its new AN/ALQ-249 NGJ mid-band pod with the EA-18G, with initial operating capability aimed for 2022....
...Raytheon’s NGJ solution was selected by the US Navy in 2013 as the first step towards replacing the ALQ-99 family. It beat off competition from Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and ITT Exelis (now part of the Harris Corporation). Increment 1 of NGJ focuses on the mid-band jammer, whereas NGJ increment 2 will develop a low-band pod. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) issued a draft statement of objectives on June 29 for an Increment 2 preliminary demonstration contract, which will lead to a formal request for proposals later this year. Low-band typically includes early warning radars and voice communications frequencies. Increment 3 is for the high-band jammer, which will complete the replacement of the suite of ALQ-99 capabilities for the US Navy and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Growlers.
MID-BAND JAMMER
CAPT Michael Orr, program manager for airborne electronic attack systems (PMA-234), said,... the biggest step-change in the ALQ-249 over the ALQ-99 as being, ‘the mechanical technology [of the old pod] compared to the digital AESA [active electronically scanned array] of the NGJ,’ which will allow the pod to jam more accurately and quickly.
The challenge for NGJ mid-band has been the need to produce an immense amount of power in a pod carried under the wings of a tactical fighter that will be required to make years of carrier landings. The combination of high-powered, agile beam-jamming techniques and cutting-edge solid-state electronics gives the navy an open systems architecture pod that can be upgraded and reconfigured as threats and requirements evolve.
The huge ram-air turbine in the ALQ-249 is fed via large air scoops on the side of the pod. Slocumb admits that weight ‘was a challenge’. ‘This is a very dense package,’ he says referring to the equipment inside the pod, which is also thought to generate huge amounts of heat. Indeed, heat concerns are believed to have undermined previous plans to fit a bespoke version of the Raytheon system in the F-35B weapons bay for the US Marine Corps to facilitate an electronic attack EA-35.
The navy completed Milestone B for mid-band, allowing NGJ to move into the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase. On April 14, 2016, the service awarded Raytheon a $1-billion sole source contract for EMD for Increment 1. Raytheon is delivering 15 EMD pods for mission systems testing and qualification, and 14 aeromechanical pods for airworthiness certification. The NGJ contract also covers designing and delivering simulators and hardware to government labs and support for flight-testing and system integration....
...FLIGHT TRIALS
Raytheon completed initial flight trials of its Next-Generation Jammer (NGJ) system in 2014. A series of trials culminated in a live flight on October 16 with the NGJ aboard a Gulfstream III testbed from Calspan.
Flying out of Point Mugu, California, the initial three-hour test flight was conducted over the NAWS China Lake electronic warfare ranges to assess ‘aircraft integration, jamming techniques, beam agility, array-transmit power and jammer management’.
Rick Yuse said, ‘This was the first time that we tested all the sub-systems together in an integrated, end-to-end [electronic warfare] system against real-world threats. The system included a high-gain, high-power active electronically scanned array [AESA], an all-digital, scalable, reprogrammable receiver/techniques generator, and a self-contained power generation system. We ran a series of tests and each time, the flight demonstration system automatically followed the threat’s every move.’"
Source: Combat Aircraft Magazine October 2018 Vol.19 No.10
