Raytheon Demonstrates Integrated Electronic Attack System

Raytheon along with the US Navy announced Thursday that they successfully demonstrated an end to end integrated electronic attack system (jammer) during flight tests at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in October.

The test was conducted to prove out the maturity of critical technologies in a representative environment against real-world threats.

"Eight months after award of the NGJ program we successfully flew the integrated prototype system against representative threat radars," said Travis Slocumb, vice president of Electronic Warfare Systems at Raytheon's Space and Airborne Systems business.

The system consisted of an active electronically scanned array (AESA), an all-digital, open, scalable receiver and techniques generator and a self-powered pod mounted on the underside of a Gulfstream business jet.

The high power AESA front end and multichannel techniques generator are common building blocks not just for the U.S. Navy's Next Generation Jammer, but also for other airborne, maritime and ground-based EW systems. 

A team of engineering and technical personnel collected and evaluated test data confirming the successful jamming and disruption of air defense radars, which were representative of enemy threat radars. The combination of jamming techniques, beam agility, array-transmit power and jammer management were very effective against the threat systems and all test objectives were met or exceeded. 

A primary goal of the flight test activity, based at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, was to reduce risk in the engineering, manufacturing and development (EMD) phase of the Next Generation Jammer acquisition by the US Navy.