RTX Raytheon to build Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) electronic warfare (EW) airborne jammer
PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – Airborne electronic warfare experts at RTX Corp. will provide the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) avionics to the U.S. Navy to counter new adversary RF and microwave threats.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., announced a $580.6 million contract to the RTX Raytheon segment in El Segundo, Calif., for low-rate initial production Lot V of the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band for the Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
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 U.S. Navy and Australian air force employ NGJ-MB on the carrier-based EA-18G Growler electronic attack jet to target advanced electronic warfare (EW) threats.
Simultaneous target attack
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.
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.
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 integrates 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.
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.
NGJ Low Band
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.; and Andover, Mass., and should be finished by November 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.
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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.