The US Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman and L3 Technologies contracts worth $35.1 million to demonstrate existing technologies for the low-band frequency jammer, the second increment of the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) program.
The NGJ system will augment, and ultimately replace the EA-18G Growler aircraft’s aging ALQ-99 tactical jammer with advanced airborne electronic attack capabilities for defeating increasingly advanced and capable threats.
Developed in three frequency-focused increments – high-band, mid-band and low-band – NGJ will be capable of jamming multiple radar signals at the same time, including surveillance and air-defense radars.
“Northrop Grumman will deliver a mature, low-risk and exceedingly capable solution for Next Generation Jammer Low Band that outpaces evolving threats and enables the Navy’s speed-to-fleet path,” Thomas Jones, vice president and general manager, airborne C4ISR systems, Northrop Grumman, commented.
“NGJ-LB is a critical piece of the overall NGJ system in that it focuses on the denial, degradation, deception and disruption of our adversaries’ abilities to gain an advantage in that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Capt. Michael Orr, PMA-234 program manager. “It delivers to the warfighter significant improvements in power, advanced jamming techniques, and jamming effectiveness over the legacy ALQ-99 system.”
Each “demonstration of existing technologies” contract has a 20-month period of performance, during which the NGJ-LB team will assess the technological maturity of L3 Technologies and Northrop Grumman’s existing technologies in order to inform future NGJ-LB capability development, as well as define the NGJ-LB acquisition strategy.