Raytheon Technologies has clinched a $650 million contract to produce and deliver a total of 15 Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) ship sets for the US Navy and Australia.
Eleven ship sets, two pods for each set, are expected to be delivered to the navy and four to Australia by April 2024.
The low-rate initial production contract includes associated spares, support equipment, non-recurring engineering, and associated data.
US-Australia Joint Development
The US Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force jointly developed the next-generation jammer to replace the AN/ALQ-99 pods on their Boeing EA-18G Growler fleets.
The navy approved the system for production in July 2021.
Greater Jamming Capability
The NGJ-MB’s “software-based and active electronically scanned array (AESA) technologies” offer greater jamming capability than the Vietnam War era ALQ-99.
“They [ALQ-99] had some reliability issues in the past and may be interfering with signals from newer AESA radars seen on many modern aircraft,” Air Force Technology quoted security analyst James Marques as saying.
“The EA-18G is a very modern electronic attack aircraft where the two aircrew needs effective and reliable equipment to operate under a high workload in the cockpit,” he explained.
“The new pods are meant to address this by being more powerful, having open-source systems for software and hardware upgrades, and using AESA technology themselves sometimes. Details on jamming tech like this can be sparse but consider it a likely upgrade in most or all ways.”