NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s mission is to penetrate the threat ring of the world’s best anti-aircraft defenses and survive, but its formula will work only if the right improvements and upgrades are in place, including the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ).
New integrated air defense networks — some of them fielding improved versions of the S-300 family like the NATO-dubbed SA-20 and SA-22 — are already on the way. The antidote for these long-range, high-altitude missiles is expected to be the NGJ, which is to be fielded in 2018.
There have been two directions of research in the exploratory stages of NGJ. One is the world of elegant, low-power techniques using tailored waveforms to unlock enemy electronics. The second is the use of extremely well-directed, high-power radiation that can incapacitate enemy electronics.
“We do need to go to smarter techniques like coherent jamming, where you spend a substantial amount of time listening and then respond in-band in a more deceptive construct than just simply putting out jamming noise,” says Capt. John Green, the U.S. Navy’s program manager for airborne electronic attack and the EA-6B Prowler.
There is interest in putting NGJ on other platforms such as long-endurance UAVs that are optimized for electronic surveillance. “We’re looking at it, but it’s not a program of record,” Green says. “However, one of the reasons that the chief of naval operations aligned UAVs and [electronic countermeasures] is because he sees it as all part of information dominance. The [AOA, or analysis of alternatives] group is looking at a very smart process for making solutions for EA-18G and F-35 as similar as possible.”
There are a number of capabilities NGJ will not have, at least in the beginning:
• There is no plan yet to generate electronically destructive high-power microwaves pulses. Interest so far has focused elsewhere.
• Network intrusion is not currently a mission for NGJ. That mission belongs to other platforms.
• There is no focus or investment so far in altering the signature or radar reflectivity of wing-mounted pods that will carry NGJ, even though F-35 is a stealth aircraft.
• The Program Office and AOA group has yet to come up with a pod design that combines an aerodynamic shape but still yields a good antenna array presentation.
Four teams have been awarded contracts to pursue technology maturation of the NGJ design: BAE Systems/Cobham, ITT/Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. Results of the AOA have not been revealed, but five Preliminary Critical Technology Enablers have been identified: power generation and distribution, exciters, beam-formers, high-power amplifiers and apertures.