The U.S. Navy’s Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) developmental pod recently completed a portion of developmental testing in the Air Combat Environmental Test and Evaluation Facility anechoic chamber at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland.
The NGJ-MB Engineering Development Model (EDM) pods, developed by the Raytheon Company in El Segundo, California, completed more than 400 hours of basic functionality, Electromagnetic Environmental Effects (E3) data collection and performance testing over a period of three months.
“This chamber test period was instrumental to the NGJ-MB Developmental Test program, and its success was the direct result of outstanding teamwork among the Program Office, Integrated Test Team, and Raytheon stakeholders,” said Capt. Michael Orr, Airborne Electronic Attack Systems (PMA-234) program manager.
“Data captured during this period not only supports our initial flight clearance, but also provided lessons learned that will benefit the entire NGJ-MB test program moving forward.”
According to a news release:
“The NGJ-MB system consists of two pods, referred to as a shipset, which will be loaded onto EA-18G Growler aircraft. The system will provide significantly improved Airborne Electronic Attack (AEA) capabilities against advanced threats in the mid-band frequency range through enhanced agility and precision within jamming assignments, increased interoperability and expanded broadband capacity for greater threat coverage against a wide variety of radio frequency emitters. Unlike most capabilities that instantly replace its predecessor, the NGJ-MB systems will initially augment the legacy ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System until the low- and high-band components are ready to deploy.”
NGJ-MB will enter flight testing at the Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 this spring.
No doubt these will provide a very useful role in future conflicts. Australia has ordered a batch of the latest version of these I believe?
F-35A Joint Strike Fighters Fly With EA-18G Growlers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQEuIcoONOE
This video gives a better insight as to what we might expect to see in the near future.
US Navy and Boeing Use Manned Jet to Control Drone Growlers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xtt94bS2Vc
Better make them F35 friendly. Or our two brand spanking new carriers will have no suppression of air defence capability.
I seriously doubt these pods/systems will be integrated into the F-35.
Btw, the F-35 already has a pretty good jamming capability built in. Not in the same class as the Growler but still effective for the operations it will do from the Brit CVs. If the Brits need the big jammers they will call in the US and now the Aussie Growlers like they have always done.
There have been proposals to integrate the NGJ to the F-35 for some time.
However, the lack of a 2 seat version of the F-35 seriously restricts their viability, simply put you need the additional crew member to work the system. In addition the NGJ are about the draggiest store to carry, any aircraft carrying it (including the EA-18G) has drastically reduced range (is not just the bulk, its the drag from the air turbines that provide power).
Basically its useless for carrier ops unless you’ve got guaranteed tanking available. Which a USN carrier does. Any F-35B mounted one could not realistically accompany an F-35B strike anywhere close to range. Mounting the pod internally on an F-35 is also off the cards due to the colossal heat that they generate, and the requirement for power generation.
As the UK operates a fully LO fleet on the QE, rather than the mixed fleet of LO and legacy aircraft that the USN uses our need is slightly lessened. Some form of high powered jammer would be a nice capability, but realistically won’t be around for a while. Spear EW will give the UK F-35B’s an additional electronic attack capability, but in a different way. The use of Loyal Wingmen or UCAV’s as stand off or stand in jammers could be a game changer in future though.
It is unlikely at present that the F35s will get a separate jammer pod. At the moment it doesn’t need one. There are really two types of jammer pods, one for self defence, the other for offence. The Tornado carried the Sky Shadow pod, this was more of a self defence jammer as it put a protective bubble, in essence, around the aircraft. For its time it was quite sophisticated, but isn’t a patch on the more modern jammers that use digital radio frequency memory (DRFM). The Typhoons have their own dedicated built-in jammer system called Praetorian. This uses DRFM techniques and by all accounts is very good. The jammer is incorporated within the defensive aids system (DAS) controlled by a central computer. This means the system works in concert with other aids such as decoys and electronic surveillance, giving the pilot better situational awareness and a more robust method of dealing with threats. Again the jammer is for self protection, it hasn’t the power for being used offensively.
The Typhoon is being fitted with Leonardo’s Britecloud RF decoys. These are amazingly brilliant one shot jammers and are game changing for RF defence, when compared to chaff. For starters they are fired from the aircraft and for a short time mimic the speed of the aircraft. This is very important, as most modern radars use moving target algorithms. This measures the relative speeds of the target and by using certain doppler techniques can filter out chaff, because its relative speed is very low compared to an aircraft hiding behind it. The Britecloud uses DRFM technology. This takes a live recording of the radar transmission, manipulates it, then re-transmits it. The re-transmission can be made to mimic the RCS of the targeted aircraft, change the velocity and location or transmit ghosts of the actual target (false targets), making the radar think there is more than one target. Britecloud truly is a game changer for aircraft defence against RF guided missiles or radar.
Jammers work due to the way radar conforms to the inverse square law, i.e. the radar will only receive a relative proportion of the transmitted signal dependent on the range and the signal dispersion. Therefore, depending on the range to the radar and its power output, the jammer could transmit a more powerful signal back to the radar that either mimics the radar’s signal or blanks it out with white noise. There is a point called burn through, where the radar’s output power is greater than the jammers, so the radar can effectively see through the jammers’s noise, this can be worked out mathematically so the aircraft won’t need to encroach within this point.
The NGJ-MB is in a completely different ball-park in regards to capability. Britecloud will mimic an aircraft to decoy a radar or missile away from the targeted aircraft, so in effect can only really protect the parent aircraft. The NGJ-MB using similar techniques can manipulate the targeted radar or communications from a long stand-off distance. A long time ago, the Vulcan carried the Red Shrimp L and S band jammer and the Blue Diver B band jammer. These jammers used around 40Kw of electrical power alone and transmitted in the 10s of Kws. They were designed to jam search radars and the SA2 tracking radar in particular. There is a good story about how the Vulcans knocked out New York during a cold war exercise. A force of four Vulcans attacked New York. With two aircraft acting as decoys and the other two doing the “bomb run”. The four aircraft approached at low level, where the two decoy aircraft popped up to 10,000ft and activated their jammers. Not only did this blind the early warning radar, but it is also knocked out the TV broadcast signal. So the “whole of New York’s” TVs suddenly showed white noise. The two bombers went undetected over New York and even made a run over Washington DC before rendezvousing with the decoy aircraft and heading home. This was in the 1960’s using technology from the day. The NGJ-MB is a quantum leap in technology compared to Red Shrimp or Blue Diver. The power output may be about the same, but they can now mirror frequency hopping systems and other modern techniques on the fly rather than be pre-programmed. A good example of the technology leap is the size of the tail cone of the Vulcan. This held the power supply conditioning units and controllers for the jammers. Each conditioner was about the size of an old metal rubbish bin (pre-wheelie bin) and there were nine of them. The NGJ-MB is about the size of a drop tank, yet is more capable and transmits near enough the same amount of power.
The Growler equipped with the next generation jammer is a major force multiplier. Granted, a F35 could probably approach a S400 battery at medium height and get well with weapon range before being detected. However, with the Growler on hand, the battery commander would have a significantly harder job detecting a F35, especially if it’s being white noise jammed or even just being spoofed with false targets. It’s a pity we don’t have the cash to convert the mothballed two-seater Typhoons to the Typhoon ECR, it would significantly increase the effectiveness of the Typhoons in ground attack, but also the F35s.
The stealth and electronic attack capabilities of the F-35 actually make them ideal for SEAD missions. Jamming is exponentially more effective the closer you can get the hammer to the radar, and the F-35 can get in much closer than the Growler. Which is why the Navy will employ Growlers for stand-OFF jamming, and F-35Cs for stand-IN jamming.
The USMC is already working on integrating jamming pods into the F35B. Once they’ve completed the process I’m sure they will be available to the UK if we want them.