🔷 Jammin’

Next Gen Jammin’

The Navy’s Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) is an effort to modernize technology for the Airborne Electronic Attack (AEA) mission for the EA-18G Growler.

NGJ will replace the service’s ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System, a podded jammer that’s been in service since 1971. Designed initially to jam low frequencies, the ALQ-99 was upgraded over the years with ground-configurable bands and expanded coverage, but it’s still a 50-year-old design that was shaped to fly on the EA-6B Prowler.

Side note: the ALQ-99E was a non-podded variant used by the Air Force EF-111As from the 1970s to the 1990s that shared most of the Navy’s ALQ-99 tech.

So What

NGJ is a 3-pod solution designed for the EA-18G: a low-band, mid-band, and high-band pod incorporating AESA arrays and other cool tech we can’t tell you about. This 3-pod program was individually competed by the Navy (with Austrailian support). Accordingly, the pod programs are called NGJ-LB, NGJ-MB, and NGJ-HB.

Mid

The NGJ-MB mid-band pod program started first. In 2013, Raytheon beat Northrop Grumman for the contract.

The original plan was to have them fielded by 2020, but it's defense tech, so…the production contract happened in 2021, the first production pods were delivered in 2022, and NGJ-MB pods are currently in the Middle East on their first deployment.

Low

The NGJ-LB low-band pod came next; it looks completely different and is designed for the EA-18G’s centerline station.

Last month, L3Harris was re-re-awarded the production contract for 8 prototype over the next 5 years. re-read that—we didn’t stutter.

There’s so much confusing drama over the NGJ-LB program that we put this together to make sense of it—and we’re not even touching the pre-merger L3 and Harris aspects.

3 to 2

The NGJ-HB high band pod was the most nascent, and after all of the aforementioned drama (and program/budget issues?), the Navy killed it.

That’s right; the 3-pod NGJ is now a 2-pod program, and the Navy is expanding the scope of the NGJ-MB program to fill the band.

But because the pod says “mid-band” in the name, the new pod is called NGJ-MBX (X for expansion) even though it’s an extension of the same pod and program. This week, Raytheon was awarded a $192m development contract to get started.

What Now

By 2030, all of the ALQ-99 pods should be gone…but the Growler won’t be alive for too long afterward to enjoy it. The Navy’s NGAD program and CCAs will likely take that mission in the latter part of the 2030s.

The good news is that the NGJ pods were designed to be modular, so if the Navy pulls a play out of the Air Force’s ALQ-99E EF-111 Raven playbook, NGJ could be integrated into unmanned aircraft like the MQ-25.

Keeping with the EA-6B Prowler and EA-18G Growler theme, a jamming CCA called the EQ-69 “Howler” has a nice ring to it.

In That Number

180

Iran fired an estimated 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last Tuesday.

TRIVIA

On October 7th, 2001, the US launched the Global War on Terror. Before being renamed "Operation Enduring Freedom," what was the original name of the U.S. military response to the September 11 attacks?

A) Operation Freedom’s Dawn
B) Operation Enduring Justice
C) Operation Enduring Peace
D) Operation Infinite Justice

On the Radar

ICEYE’s SAR imaging satellites are getting good enough to ID military equipment from space. This commercial tech can produce 25-cm resolution imagery using X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tech. Now, the company is layering in algorithms to detect objects—including types of military equipment.

• The Merge’s Take: the commercial SAR market continues to impress us. OBTW, ICEYE is the provider of “the People's Satellite,” a crowd-sourced effort by Ukraine to buy a dedicated imaging satellite to support the war effort.

Azerbaijan now has modern fighter jets—JF-17C Block-III fighters bought from Pakistan. The JF-17 was jointly developed by China and Pakistan as a low-cost 4th gen fighter (China calls it the FC-1; Pakistan calls it the JF-17). Regardless of the name, the Block III variant has an AESA radar, helmet-mounted display (HMD), datalink, and can shoot most Chinese air-to-air missiles.

• The Merge’s Take: Just another example of how fast the world is changing. 10 years ago, an AESA radar was considered a hallmark of exquisite bleeding-edge fighter technology—very hard to develop and equally hard to buy. Now its’s relatively easy to get one. OBTW, Azerbaijan is also buying air-to-surface guided munitions with 50-mile standoff ranges.  

The Navy’s 6th-gen fighter program is pressing ahead of the Air Force. The Navy revealed they are in source selection for F/A-XX NGAD, currently weighing proposals from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. This is the phase that the Air Force’s NGAD program was in when the service decided to pause to revisit the design and requirements.

• The Merge’s Take: Fence in and try to keep up. The Air Force’s NGAD is/was a nominal 200-jet program, which introduces all of the challenges of small fleet dynamics that are well-known by the F-22 program (economics, force availability, practical application, etc.). The Navy’s program is 3X larger, aimed at replacing all 420+ F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and 150+ EA-18G Growlers. The other factor is time—a carrier-based fighter is more complex, and its development and test cycles are longer than those of an Air Force aircraft (if it takes less than a decade to field after a winner is announced, we’d be surprised). That said, where the Navy’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone program fits into this calculus is unknown (by us and probably by the Navy, too), and who knows what the Air Wing of the Future (AWOTF) looks like, except that the Navy wants it to be 60% unmanned—which changes the Navy NGAD fleet size, which changes the economics, force availability,….whew! On the bright side, the Navy’s headway should keep the Air Force’s Next Gen Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program alive/progressing since both NGAD variants will likely share this technology.

• The Merge’s Spicy Take: The 2 services use the same acronym to describe their 6th-gen fighter programs, but the Navy just has to say it differently. The Air Force’s NGAD is pronounced just like it sounds; the Navy spells it the same but pronounces it “NJAD.” There’s no soft G in fighter programs—come on!

They Said It
“It has various subsections that…we could lengthen the missile. We could shorten it. We could put a different front on it. We could alter the body length.”

— Unnamed Leidos official, describing the company’s new ‘Black Arrow’ small cruise missile. It was developed in coordination with SOCOM and ramp-launched from C-130s.

Knowledge Bombs

• Baykar’s production prototype fighter drone flew for the first time, revealing interesting outer-mold line updates (pics on LinkedIn and IG!)

• Anduril is partnering to build and integrate space payloads for Apex’s configurable satellite buses…and Anduril already has a payload in orbit with Apex (launched 6 months ago)

• The Pentagon green-lit Replicator 2.0, which will focus on delivering counter-drone tech at scale in the 2028 timeframe

• The UK started flight testing its new Typhoon AESA radar

• Pratt & Whitney opened its largest-ever military engine plant (engines for F-22, F-35, etc.), timely as they also received a $1.3B contract for the F-35’s Engine Core Upgrade (ECU) program

• DIU is looking for low-cost, long-range, one-way attack drones

• Taiwan received the first batch of Harpoon anti-ship missiles

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ANSWER
D. The original name was Operation Infinite Justice, but it was changed after just a few weeks to avoid religious sensitivities.